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Paper short abstract

The paper presents preliminary findings from a recent fieldwork in Nigeria and reflects on the analytical potential of youth life stories for understanding the origins and continuities of political activism, towards shaping renewed development and democratic futures in Africa.

Paper long abstract

How do early-life experiences of development failure shape trajectories of activism across protest movements and electoral politics? Many southern contexts are marked by prolonged development and democratic challenges, including rising poverty and inequality, conflict and instability, human rights violations, and everyday injustice. These constitute the origins of the exasperation of activists who continue to advocate for development and democratic renewal in the region. Against the backdrop of the literature on political socialisation, life histories, everyday socio-economic development, and the interrelations between social movements and elections, this study uncovers the biographical foundations of youth activist dispositions and how they are carried across contentious realms – between movements and elections. In contrast to existing unidirectional interpretations of the relations between movements and elections, and to the treatment of both realms as analytically separate domains, this study reveals the continuities and overlaps between street protest, civic mobilisation, and electoral participation. Essentially, it situates prolonged development and democratic challenges as a constant denominator across past and present youth realities and activism. This study adopts a life-story and biographical narrative approach to examine the life courses of individuals with sustained activism across movement and electoral realms in Nigeria. Their stories reveal the origins, internalisation, and perpetuity of structural conditions, as well as how those conditions mediate the transformation of disillusionment into action over the life course. These revelations highlight the value of African youth-centred life stories for capturing the long temporal junctures and logics through which development challenges, sustained activism, and democratic aspirations intersect.