About the Report

This report compares the results of parallel research projects 

carried out among impoverished, nonelite youth in postconflict Rwanda and Burundi. Arguing that the plight and 

priorities of nonelite youth should be of serious national and 

international concern, particularly in countries that have 

unusually youthful populations that are overwhelmingly poor 

and undereducated, it finds striking differences between the 

groups, with a significantly bleaker picture for 

youth in Rwanda.

About the Authors

Marc Sommers is a 2011–12 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson 

International Center for Scholars and a visiting researcher with 

Boston University’s African Studies Center. He was a Jennings 

Randolph Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace 

in 2009–10. He is the author of Stuck: Rwandan Youth and the 

Struggle for Adulthood (2011).

Peter Uvin is Henry J. Leir Professor of International 

Humanitarian Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and 

Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of Life after 

Violence: A People’s Story of Burundi (2009). 

2301 Constitution Ave., NW • Washington, DC 20037 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063

Special Report 293 October 2011

© 2011 by the United States Institute of Peace. 

All rights reserved.

Contents

Introduction 2

Notions of Manhood 2

Ways Out? Education and Migration 5

Prospects and Limits of Social Mobility 8

Conclusions and Recommendations 9

Marc Sommers and Peter Uvin

Youth in Rwanda 

and Burundi

Contrasting Visions 

Summary

•	 Extensive research with nonelite youth in postwar Rwanda and Burundi revealed stark and 

startling contrasts between the lives of poor Rwandan and Burundian youth, particularly 

concerning issues of masculinity, education, urban migration, and social mobility. 

•	 Severe manhood pressures and the threat of failure for male and female youth emerged as 

the dominant research theme in Rwanda. In Burundi, severe economic pressure surfaced as 

the dominant research theme. Yet many youth there believe that the future holds promise 

if they can work hard, remain flexible, and have some luck.

•	 Although youth in Burundi contend that educational accomplishment directly influences 

social mobility and survival strategies, the Rwanda research points to low demand for education and training among the lesser-educated youth majority. 

•	 For Burundian youth, especially male youth, urban migration was a risky but nonetheless 

desirable option. Meanwhile, Rwandan youth mainly viewed rural-urban migration as an 

escape from humiliation in rural areas. 

•	 Whereas many Burundian youth held out the hope of improving their lot and perhaps even 

ascending socially, the commanding imprint of risk aversion led many Rwandan youth to 

focus on minimizing prospects of collapse.

•	 Most Burundian youth believe that they have options and possibilities while most Rwandan 

youth do not. While Rwandan youth face constraining adulthood mandates and government 

regulations, as well as a severe housing crisis, Burundian youth perceive a range of options 

for making plans and then implementing them.

•	 Weak governance and adaptable cultures appear to provide nonelite youth populations 

in postwar contexts with opportunities for creative advancement. Strong and restrictive 

governments and cultures, while capable of implementing policies that are favorable to 

economic growth, may also create calamitous results for many youth. 

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SPECIAL REPORT
2 

•	 Boosting Rwandan youth prospects calls for reforming or perhaps eliminating housing and 

informal economy regulations that undermine their aims. Aiding Burundian youth necessitates an enhanced focus on jobs and job training. Qualitative research on marginalized 

youth perspectives should be carried out before youth work begins.

Introduction

Rwanda and Burundi have long been considered practically identical. They were once part 

of the same Rwanda-Urundi colony, ruled first by the Germans and then by the Belgians. 

They share roughly the same ethnic composition and demographic proportions of majority 

Hutu and minority Tutsi and Twa. Their languages are closely related, as are the landscapes, 

farming practices, and cultures of the two countries. They also have two of the youngest 

populations in the world.1 Finally, both countries have also experienced spasms of extreme 

violence, including genocide. 

Recently, Rwanda and Burundi have embarked on strikingly different trajectories. Rwanda has become a “donor darling”—a sparkling example, in the eyes of many, of the sort of 

sociopolitical progress that strong domestic leadership and good management can inspire. 

Burundi’s profile, in contrast, is that of a shaky, corrupt, postwar nation going nowhere 

fast. Yet many of the results from our research among poor, nonelite young Rwandans and 

Burundians, which was undertaken with World Bank support in 2006–07, were virtually the 

reverse of what we had anticipated in light of these trends. 

Our research aimed to find out how Rwandan and Burundian youth—defined here as 

males and females between fifteen and thirty-five years of age—are faring after the massive violence that shook the two countries.2 A key analytical concept in this research was 

the impact of masculinity on youth lives: how a male youth gains social recognition as “a 

man” in a society and what happens when he cannot gain such recognition. What we found 

was that the nature of governance, in addition to the flexibility of culture and society about 

achieving manhood, significantly influence male and female youth lives in Central Africa.

It turns out that generally weak governance and social tolerance toward manhood 

mandates in Burundi provide space for many youth to generate trajectories of their own. A 

dramatically different situation in Rwanda left many youth risk averse and tied to a future 

where public failure appears likely. The implications of this research for other postwar contexts are potentially significant. Frequently, the international community is exhorted to first 

invest in strengthening the state and/or to build on local “traditional” culture. While both 

these suggestions are not without interest, the comparison here underscores how too much 

state strength and cultural rigidity can create prisons of despair for youth. Weak governance 

and adaptable cultures appear to provide massive, nonelite youth populations in most 

postwar nations with opportunities for creative advancement, while strong and restrictive 

governments and cultures may create calamitous results for many young citizens. 

What follows is an overview of a series of important concerns, starting with the issue 

of masculinity and manhood and continuing with a comparative examination of education, 

urban migration, and social mobility. In all of these areas and more, we found stark contrasts between the lives of poor Rwandan and Burundian youth. The report ends with a set 

of policy recommendations on how to better understand and meet the needs of this large 

and too often unheard but absolutely critical social group.

Notions of Manhood

In both Rwanda and Burundi, adulthood is defined by marriage and the possibilities of providing for a family. Movement toward manhood and womanhood are linked, and achieving 

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily 

reflect the views of the United States Institute of Peace, 

which does not advocate specific policy positions.

To request permission to photocopy or reprint materials, 

e-mail: permissions@usip.org

About the Institute

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, 

nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress. 

Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent conflicts, 

promote postconflict peacebuilding, and increase conflict 

management tools, capacity, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with 

knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by its direct 

involvement in conflict zones around the globe.

Board of Directors

J. Robinson West (Chair), Chairman, PFC Energy •

George E. Moose (Vice Chairman), Adjunct Professor of 

Practice, The George Washington University • Judy Ansley,

Former Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser under President George W. Bush • Anne H. Cahn,

Former Scholar in Residence, American University 

• Eric Edelman, Hertog Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies 

• Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for 

Justice and Human Rights • Ikram U. Khan,

President, Quality Care Consultants, LLC • Stephen D. Krasner,

Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, 

Stanford University • John A. Lancaster, Former Executive 

Director of the National Council on Independent Living 

• Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor, George Mason School of Law 

• Judy Van Rest, Executive Vice President, International 

Republican Institute • Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice 

President, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Members Ex Officio

Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for 

Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor • James N. Miller, 

Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy •

Ann E. Rondeau, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy; President, 

National Defense University • Richard H. Solomon, 

President, United States Institute of Peace (nonvoting) 
 3

them relies on the ability of male youth to meet their first challenge. To marry, a male youth 

must first provide housing for his future wife and children. Severe manhood pressures—and, 

as a result, the strong chance that many male youth would never be recognized as men in 

society—emerged as the dominant theme of the research in Rwanda. The threat of failed 

masculinity in rural areas is having a kind of domino effect on Rwandan society, most particularly on female youth and increasing numbers of rural youth who are migrating to cities, 

especially Kigali. While many of the same dynamics exist in Burundi as well, they were not 

as central or as unchangeable in people’s lives.

Delayed adulthood for men means delayed adulthood for women. Marriage and giving 

birth to children are prerequisites of socially acceptable womanhood. As they wait for male 

youth to complete their houses and prepare for marriage, the pressure on Rwandan female 

youth is intensified by the report that for every one hundred women in Rwanda there may 

be as few as eighty-eight men.3 As a result, as many as 12 percent of female youth will be 

unable to ever marry (and thus become adult women).4 Taken together, the female surplus 

and the limited number of eligible husbands severely constrains female youth opportunities 

for becoming adults. In addition, entering womanhood is encircled by a narrow chronological window of opportunity. No one can get married officially in Rwanda until age twentyone. By twenty-four or twenty-five, a female youth in a rural area may be considered too 

old to marry. Single women much older than that run the risk of being considered spinsters 

in rural society.

National policies have significantly exacerbated the already intense adulthood pressures 

on male and female youth. The Rwandan government is in the process of changing the 

housing of the majority of Rwandans in rural areas. More than 80 percent of all Rwandans 

currently reside in rural areas, and the government plans to move nearly all rural dwellers 

into imidugudu, or community housing areas, by 2030—a very different situation than the 

spread-out rugo pattern, where people live on their land in family compounds, that has prevailed across Central Africa for centuries. As a government official explained, “[Male] youth 

who construct new houses will be directed to an umudugudu, and by 2030, the government 

vision is to have 80 percent of the population living on imidugudu.”5

The Rwandan government’s housing regulations are making house building for youth 

substantially more difficult and frequently, it appears, exceedingly unlikely. Strict government regulations require all new houses to be built on an umudugudu, and in a prescribed 

way. Not only is it very difficult to obtain an umudugudu plot on which to build a house, but 

the government also mandates that all houses on umudugudu must be fairly large, with at 

least two bedrooms. Regulating the standard size of an umudugudu house helps make the 

quest toward completing a house virtually impossible for nearly all poor male youth in rural 

Rwanda. Deforestation legislation that was in force (for environmental protection reasons) 

during the 2006–07 fieldwork period, moreover, caused a sharp jump in the price of roof 

tiles. Meanwhile, in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, 83 percent of the population live in illegal, 

informal settlements.6 Many if not most of them are youth. These informal settlements, too, 

are in the process of being destroyed via government edicts to replace “illegal” housing with 

legally mandated buildings. Although complaints about the forced evictions, from Rwandan 

or international sources, are rare, Alain Durand-Lasserve states that “the practice of eviction 

without fair compensation or without offering resettlement options is creating a population 

of homeless families” in Kigali.7 The collective result of these practices and restrictions is a 

severe housing crisis across Rwanda. 

In rural areas, two hundred francs was what most people were paid for a day’s work on 

another person’s farm.8 Our research found that working to save money to buy roofing is the 

main priority for most male youth in rural Rwanda. This often meant that male youth left 

primary school early to try to collect as many roof tiles as they could. Many female youth 

National policies have 

significantly exacerbated 

the already intense adulthood 

pressures on male and 

female youth.
4 

did the same: some felt that if they managed to accumulate some savings (by farming for 

others for two hundred francs a day), they might be able to attract a potential male youth 

for informal marriage (cohabitation—illegal but widely practiced without sanction in both 

countries). A male youth might propose to her by saying that if they work together, their 

collective savings would enable them to buy more roof tiles and then, hopefully, to marry. 

What was striking about this situation was how many male youth in rural Rwanda stated 

that they knew they might never complete a roof for their house in their lifetime. It can 

take 600 to 800 roof tiles to make one house roof. Given their current age and rates of 

accumulation, many youth who were interviewed might not gather much more than half of 

the required roof tiles in their entire working life. This summons the question: if the situation was so dire for male youth in rural Rwanda, why did they continue striving to buy roof 

tiles? A common male youth answer to this question was, “We have no choice.” The cultural 

requirements of manhood (and womanhood) in Rwanda appear to be unyielding and exceptionally difficult for many if not most Rwandan youth to achieve. 

Although low– and mid–level Rwandan government officials were well aware that male 

youth in their areas were unable to construct houses on an umudugudu, reporting this fact 

to their superiors appeared to be irregular and, when such reports were delivered, they did 

not inspire much of a response. Indeed, questioning the viability of Rwanda’s national imidugudu policy seems to be difficult. Illustrative of this state of affairs was the recollection 

of a sector official who asked his superior, the district mayor, how he might address the 

difficulty that male youth faced in building houses on imidugudu in his sector. The district 

mayor simply responded, “It’s policy.” That concluded their conversation. The sector official, 

by implication, had to find a solution on his own. He didn’t have one. 

In Burundi, young men and women (and their parents) largely shared the same ideals 

of normative manhood. For them, building a house, getting married, and starting a family 

were at the core of their expectations. Many of them, youth and adults alike, explained that 

the old practice of parents paying for their son’s wedding had declined because of poverty, 

and that it was difficult for young men to save enough money on their own. Indeed, when 

describing how hard life is nowadays, Burundians would refer to the fact that young men 

marry later today than they previously did. Yet, although the definition of normative manhood was the same as in Rwanda, and the combined effect of war and economic decline 

had made achieving these expectations very hard in Burundi as well, Burundian youth did 

not present themselves as stuck the same way Rwandan youth did. Somehow, for Burundian 

youth, their incapacity to build a house and marry in the fashion that tradition mandated 

merely symbolized the tough times they faced. Unlike their Rwandan counterparts, striving 

to attain manhood did not constitute the core element of their lives. 

Only a small minority of young people in Burundi said they would never marry. It occurred 

specifically among two particular groups: Tutsi young men in a camp for internally displaced 

persons (IDP), and mainly Hutu ex-combatants who did not participate in the demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration (DDR) program in the city.9 Both of these groups felt 

far more alienated from society than any other group that this research studied in Burundi. 

They seemed to be depressed, with their professed inability ever to marry a main cause or 

symbol of their despair. 

Why did most Burundian youth expect to marry while most Rwandan youth did not? First, 

Rwandan-style regulations do not exist in Burundi. This made life (for now at least) less difficult for Burundian male youth: they had more freedom to choose to build where and how 

they wanted, at lower cost. In addition, it seemed as if Burundian society was less attached 

to the expectation that youth must achieve normative adulthood. It is not that the norm 

itself had changed, but rather that Burundians widely accepted that it could not be perfectly 

achieved, and were willing to accommodate alternatives. Thus, Burundians young and old 

The cultural requirements of 

manhood (and womanhood) in 

Rwanda appear to be unyielding 

and exceptionally difficult for 

many if not most Rwandan 

youth to achieve. 
 5

told us that people nowadays married later than they used to; they engaged in informal 

marriage that society found acceptable; and instead of building a house, a male youth could 

simply build a room next to the house of his parents, marry a female youth, and begin married life. Although all three of these alternatives were also found in Rwanda, Rwandan youth 

and adults considered them embarrassments and signs of social failure. Building any new 

house or shelter outside of an umudugudu in Rwanda was illegal as well.

Cultural adaptation in Burundi, in short, stood in sharp contrast to nonadaptation in 

Rwanda. Against enormous odds, under pressure from a combination of government and 

cultural mandates, Rwandan youth desperately tried to stick to traditional ideals of normative adulthood. Some female and, especially, male youth facing dire straits in rural Rwanda 

migrated to Kigali to escape the shame and humiliation that their inability to marry had created. Some urban youth even reported that they feared returning to their former rural homes 

until they had married or, at the very least, had some sign of economic success from their 

urban adventure, even for a visit—a striking sentiment in a country as tiny as Rwanda. In 

Burundi, the situation was far more relaxed. Youth there considered marrying later. Informal 

marriage and building onto family structures were second-best solutions, to be sure, but 

they were also a clearly acceptable part of life. One twenty-one-year-old male youth sums 

up Burundian attitudes nicely: “Men who stay unmarried long are partly looked upon badly 

by society. But on the other hand, it is understood because of the great cost.” 

Ways Out? Education and Migration

Education

More than any other subject, attitudes toward education and its potential to improve life 

prospects revealed remarkable differences between the future hopes of Burundian and 

Rwandan youth. In our research in Burundi, education was “the single issue that came up 

most in the conversations about how (young) people try to make it in life. It is at the heart 

of individual social mobility and family strategies for survival.”10 A whopping 85 percent of 

those interviewed in Burundi spontaneously brought up education. Men talked about it as 

much as women, Hutu as much as Tutsi, less poor households as much as poor households, 

and rural people as much as urban people. There were only minor differences: Tutsi interviewed in an internally displaced persons camp had a strikingly high rate of attachment to 

education, whereas some of the wealthier rural people were less interested in it—probably 

because youth had enough work and wealth in helping their parents manage their livestock 

and lands. 

In Rwanda, virtually the opposite situation prevailed: only 12 percent of rural youth 

respondents to a question about their future plans included education. A mere 4 percent 

mentioned training. The proportions were even smaller among urban youth, where less than 

6 percent of respondents mentioned education or training as a component of their plans. 

Rwandan youth, regardless of their level of educational accomplishment, generally contended that the educated youth minority live in an entirely separate world from the undereducated youth majority. As a destitute male youth of twenty-four explained, “How could 

an educated person become uneducated, or an uneducated person become educated? It’s 

impossible to change your situation.” The Rwanda research strongly suggests that demand 

for education and training is low among what might be assumed is the primary target group: 

the lesser-educated youth majority. 

This may be viewed as an alarming and tragic finding. However, most Rwandan youth 

who were interviewed appeared to have taken a different view: to accept one’s fate, including the reality (for them) that entrance into a secondary school, a vocational school, or even 

The Rwanda research strongly 

suggests that demand for 

education and training is low 

among . . . the lesser-educated 

youth majority. 
6 

a training program, was never going to happen. Life became easier to deal with, in other 

words, if these limitations were simply accepted. 

The contrast between the research findings from these two countries was not only 

dramatic but surprising. After all, it is Rwanda that has by all accounts the better educational system. Better-off people in Burundi dream of sending their children to the National 

University of Rwanda, for the education there is reputed to be significantly better than in 

Burundi. Rwanda’s education policy is better organized, better executed, and better funded 

than Burundi’s. The Rwandan government has a clear vision for how to use advanced technical education as a motor for economic transformation over the coming decades. In strong 

contrast, the education system in Burundi is in shambles, and the national government’s 

capacity to formulate and execute a coherent education policy is far lower. Small wonder 

that the sharp difference between findings on education with similar samples of youth in 

Burundi and Rwanda startled Rwandan officials at the district and national government 

levels, in addition to international officials in Kigali with whom the findings were shared. 

For many, such an outcome was unforeseen in the midst of Rwanda’s much-touted and substantial expansion of child and youth access to education.

Why is there a far deeper attachment to education in Burundi than in Rwanda? One compelling explanation arises from the sharply contrasting outlooks of youth on their future. Rwandan 

youth elicited a strong emphasis on practicality, on not hoping for something—such as a good 

education—that, in their view, they will never get. The idea for most undereducated Rwandan 

youth was that you have to first accept your plight, and then sculpt a life as best as you can. 

It is a life lived within narrow expectations and limited possibilities, where realism dominates 

and imagination seems to be the reserve of the more fortunate. It is, in short, a life based on 

regrettable fate: you either have the advantages of education or you do not. Most do not. As 

a result, while Rwanda’s education system may be good and ethnic discrimination does not 

formally exist, most ordinary Rwandans believe that they have no chance to make it to higher 

education and the social advancement that it represents. The undereducated Rwandan youth 

majority were proactive in a very specific way: they reduced the possibility of likely disappointment by not hoping for much education or training in the first place.

In Burundi, in pointed contrast, even though the education system is poorly equipped 

and organized, people were more in tune with the opportunities inherent in education: if 

parents had the luck of having a truly smart child, then they might possess the “lottery 

ticket” needed to get their family away from farming and out of poverty. That was a dream 

all Burundian parents shared. To some degree, this may have been an expression of the 

timing of the field research work: in 2006, the country had just successfully gone through 

a transition to an elected government dominated by a Hutu party. The first decision of the 

new president, Pierre Nkurunziza, had been to guarantee free primary education for all. 

This decision was extremely popular at the time and led to an explosion in enrollment at 

the beginning of the next school year. Unequal access to secondary and tertiary education 

had been one of the key tools for the exclusion of the majority of the population under the 

previous, Tutsi-dominated regimes. This new policy was a strong symbol that change was 

coming to Burundi. Maybe the Hutu youth interviewed finally felt free to dream of education 

as a way out after decades where it was a virtual impossibility. Nonetheless, this dream is 

likely not the only factor that explains the broad importance of education to Burundians, 

for it occurred equally among Hutu and Tutsi, rich and poor, the children of highly educated 

parents and the children of undereducated parents, rural and urban, male and female.

Another possible explanation relates to the forceful presence of traditional expectations 

of masculinity, which will be revisited in the next section. Before that, let us make two 

remarks here. First, here is a quote from Peter Uvin’s research in Burundi:

While Rwanda’s education 

system may be good and ethnic 

discrimination does not formally 

exist, most ordinary Rwandans 

believe that they have no chance 

to make it to higher education and 

social advancement.
 7

Education means you are not stuck anymore in the prison that rural life represents 

for many people. This means that for people the investment in education is mainly 

worth it if one gets to the end of the process. The economic benefits of education 

are much more of an all-or-nothing nature—not a gradual process—than is usually 

acknowledged. It is not as if each year of additional schooling makes Burundians one 

thirteenth better off. Rather, once one passes the level at which one can read and 

write there is a long plateau of few increased personal quality-of-life gains, and then a 

dramatic increase after tenth grade, and especially at completion of high school. This is 

why so many people talked to us about education jusqu’au diplome—until the diploma, 

for that is where education pays off.11

For poor Burundians to attain that level of education requires extensive sacrifice. Many 

students have to try multiple times to get their primary and secondary school degrees. A 

lot of young people lost years of schooling due to civil war and displacement as well as 

school mismanagement and strikes. As a result, many young men and women will be well 

into their twenties before they may (or may not) get to the real prize of education—a 

secondary-school degree, and, even better, a university degree. Second, this contrasts 

with the expectation that young men must earn money and start a family—something 

that historically, in Burundi, they were supposed to do between ages eighteen and 

twenty-one. The difference between how Burundian and Rwandan youth regard education, it turns out, is directly tied to the striking difference between how they grapple 

with adulthood expectations.

Migration

Another significant difference between the twin research endeavors relates to how youth 

assessed the prospect of urban migration as a means to improve their lives. Rwandan 

youth in villages and in Kigali primarily viewed rural–urban migration as an escape from 

humiliation and failure in rural areas rather than a way out of impoverishment. For them, the 

push–pull dichotomy so common in urban migration studies is virtually bereft of any kind 

of “pull.” Rural and urban youth in Rwanda scarcely ever mentioned any wonders of city life 

and its various attractions. Instead, they viewed Kigali as risky and treacherous. Since Kigali 

was a place where people went and might never return, it was mainly a destination for the 

desperate, not the inquisitive or the dynamic. For Burundian youth, especially male youth, 

on the other hand, urban migration was a desirable option—risky and difficult for sure, but 

associated with the potential for success. In this way, the views of Burundian youth run 

much more closely to those of youth in other African nations, where modernity is highly 

valued,12 and cities, widely considered as the homeland of urban culture, offer youth an 

array of possibilities, especially for male youth.13

It seemed as if the constraints on urban migration were largely the same in both countries—

migrating without money, without knowing someone who can shelter you and help you get a 

job, is a scary affair for poor rural youth. However, many Burundian youth spoke about it 

positively. They discussed urban migration as a solution to escaping rural landlessness and 

joblessness (the push factors), but also as a place for individual advancement and fresh 

opportunities (pull). It is hard to say if more Burundians actually migrated to cities—

Burundi’s urban growth rate is the world’s highest while Rwanda’s runs a close second14—or 

if Burundian youth did substantially better once in town. But certainly their general attitude 

toward migration was far more upbeat than their Rwandan counterparts. 

Urban migrant youth themselves, when interviewed in Bujumbura and Kigali, were far 

more pleased with their decision in Burundi than in Rwanda. Indeed, in Bujumbura, about 

half of the people interviewed in the poor neighborhoods (quartiers popularaires) considered 

their lives better than their parents’. Nothing of the sort surfaced among urban youth in 

Rwanda, where most considered Kigali life exceptionally bleak. 

The difference between how 

Burundian and Rwandan youth 

regard education is directly 

tied to the striking difference 

between how they grapple with 

adulthood expectations.
8 

Prospects and Limits of Social Mobility

Given these differing attitudes toward two important potential vectors of social mobility—

education and migration—we found that Burundian youth had a far higher sense of potential social mobility than Rwandan youth did. Note that this does not mean that, objectively 

or factually, Rwanda has less vertical mobility than Burundi does. Reliable data on this 

subject simply do not exist. This analysis is based on reported perceptions and the interpretations and ideologies that make sense of these perceived facts. 

The overall sense of social mobility, that is, that there was a real possibility to move up 

in society, via education or migration, differed sharply between male and female youth in 

Rwanda and Burundi. Throughout the interviews, Burundian youth displayed a far greater 

belief in potential mobility than their Rwandan counterparts did. While youth in both countries believed that downward social mobility was more likely than upward social mobility, 

the commanding imprint of risk aversion, so prominent among Rwandan youth, was far less 

apparent in Burundian youth. 

Ironically, Burundian youth seemed to have the sort of attunement to new ideas and 

innovations that Rwandan government officials tried so hard to inculcate in Rwandan youth. 

Burundian youth were interested in “trying different things,”15 while Rwandan youth (and 

adults) largely resisted the new ideas that government officials, in rural areas and Kigali alike, 

implored them to adapt. More than that, most Burundian youth had a “capitalist ethos”—a 

can-do ethic of “hard work and perseverance, good management, and dynamism.”16 While 

many Burundian youth held out the hope of improving their lot and perhaps even ascending 

socially, the overwhelming attitude among members of the poor Rwandan youth majority, 

in words and in actions, was to minimize their chances of collapse.

One possible explanation for this difference lies in divergent attitudes toward the state. 

In both countries, only the smallest fraction of youth had direct experience with international aid. Young Burundians spoke frequently about their families as sources of support; 

even in the capital city, where many bemoaned the decline of community aid and family 

support, they gave examples of its continuing occurrence. Burundian youth also never 

mentioned the state when they described their plans for the future. There were clearly few 

expectations that the state would support their progress. 

Meanwhile, in Rwanda, most youth had little to no expectation that families could help 

them all that much. The Rwandan government, on the other hand, was an entirely different 

story. Regardless of whether the comments referred to youth being “prisoners” of government regulations or that “the government is our parent,” having the government “close to 

us” was a persistent, recurring Rwandan refrain. To be sure, there seemed to be no one else 

around to help youth, and expecting the government to help was part of most strategies.17

Yet these responses support an outlook on life that seeks help and averts risk. It is not adaptive, experimental, or innovative, as the capitalist ethos of many Burundian youth suggests. 

Instead, it is generally cautious and conservative. 

At the same time, the Rwandan government’s general approach to youth challenges is 

both directive and entirely at odds with the priorities of most Rwandan youth. In interview 

after interview, Rwandan government officials emphatically asserted that out-of-school 

youth should work together in associations to achieve mutual gain. Yet in Rwanda as in 

Burundi, most youth quietly resisted joining associations and viewed their pathway ahead 

as individuals.

The striking determination of the Rwandan government to sculpt poor youth lives may 

be explained by the fact that the state has historically been—and still is—far stronger in 

Rwanda than in Burundi. As all literature on state formation demonstrates, state strength 

is not only a matter of resources and physical presence—public buildings, civil servants, 

While many Burundian youth 

held out the hope of improving 

their lot . . . the overwhelming 

attitude among the Rwandan 

youth majority . . . was to 

minimize their chances 

of collapse.
 9

registers, and books—but also of mental expectations.18 While the two states have long 

seemed alike, it is widely recognized that the precolonial state was substantially stronger in 

Rwanda than in Burundi.19 This difference continued during the postindependence period; 

indeed, it may well have become accentuated by the fact that the Rwandan regimes until 

the late 1980s had far more social legitimacy than the Burundian ones. Scott Straus, for 

example, describes the pregenocidal Rwandan state (that is, Rwanda before April 1994) as 

“powerful, hierarchical, and quite effective at controlling the population.”20

It is a widely held depiction of the current regime as well. The reach of today’s Rwandan state is expansive; its tendency toward pervasive social engineering, which is at least 

partially in response to the very difficult postgenocidal context with which it has had to 

contend since coming to power, is illuminated in its approach toward housing, marriage, 

the informal economy, the environment, and public health. The Rwandan government 

dominates the social and economic lives of its citizens in ways that far exceed neighboring 

Burundi. There, most Burundians, during the last decades and culminating with the civil 

war of 1993–2002, have come to expect less and less of their state. The Burundian state has 

effectively reciprocated by becoming more illegitimate, inefficient, and, during more than a 

decade of war, far weaker. As a result, Burundians not only are cynical and distrustful toward 

their government and its representatives, but they also have learned to work around their 

government, to avoid it, and to count on their own resources as much as possible. 

In short, a strong and controlling state coexists with, and reinforces, a risk-averse and 

quietly resistant population in Rwanda, whereas in Burundi a weak and easily subverted 

state coexists with a more dynamic and flexible population. The ultimate irony is that it 

is the Rwandan state that has smart and well implemented-policies in place for education, 

health, and economic development, whereas the Burundian state is not capable of supporting the initiative of its own population. 

Conclusions and Recommendations

This report has presented some major differences between Rwandan and Burundian youth 

regarding their views and perceptions of adulthood and social mobility. Both are important 

indicators of their faith in the future. In Rwanda, a great many youth seem despondent and 

disillusioned. In Burundi, youth face many of the same challenges as in Rwanda, yet many 

Burundian youth believe that the future holds promise if they can work hard, remain flexible, 

and have some luck. 

The differences between the lives of Burundian and Rwandan youth ultimately boil down 

to this: most Burundian youth believe that they have options and possibilities while most 

Rwandan youth do not. Rwandan youth perceive themselves as living in a world dominated 

by rigid cultural requirements, expansive government regulations, and a risk-averse orientation that resists innovation and new ideas. The only option that most of them seem to have 

is to try harder than ever and hope for the best. In rural areas, this mainly means striving 

hard to become an adult, working for others, and trying to save money, while knowing that 

they will probably fail to attain their goal—the benefits of socially accepted adulthood. In 

urban areas, it means trying somehow to get enough money to stay afloat and avoid the 

dreaded fates of becoming a homeless “wanderer” or a prostitute. The Rwandan government 

is simultaneously progressive and prodevelopment, as well as interventionist and controlling. Both the state and society in Rwanda, then, are felt to combine inflexibility with a 

strong push to succeed along a preordained path. 

While Burundian youth share with Rwandan youth a determination for self-improvement 

as individuals, their general orientation differs significantly. Burundian youth—female as 

well as male—think of themselves as possessing a broader range of options, being able to 

The Rwandan government 

dominates the social and 

economic lives of its citizens 

in ways that far exceed 

neighboring Burundi. 
10 

make plans of various kinds, and then setting out to implement them. Burundians, young 

and old, are of course aware they may well fail in achieving their plans, and they do not 

necessarily judge these plans as representing their ideal choices. Surely, for example, they 

would prefer to build their own house instead of adding a room to their parents’ house. But 

many of them seem willing to try to adapt, innovate, and not judge others too harshly. They 

generally seem to perceive themselves as having more control over their lives than their 

Rwandan counterparts, and, dare one say, more happiness. In stark contrast with the Rwandan government, the Burundian government leaves more space for this social flexibility, not 

because it is deeply committed to free enterprise or the protection of individual rights, but 

because of its general weakness and incapacity to run peoples’ lives. 

In Rwanda as in Burundi, centuries–old values prevail in rural and to a large extent urban 

areas that determine the culturally mandated position of male and female youth. These 

values remain vital and relevant, for the old as well as the young, for women and for men. 

However, in Burundi, it seems that, while traditional values have not been discarded, society 

is generally willing to be flexible about their implementation. The right way of doing things 

is for a male youth to work the land, save money, build a house near their parents, marry 

a well-behaved, hard-working local girl, and have many children together—but it is widely 

understood that this may not be possible today. 

Burundians, it seems, are willing to accept a certain amount of flexibility and generosity toward the adulthood challenges that youth face. The situation in Rwanda is strikingly 

different. There, society seems to provide struggling youth with few or no alternatives to 

traditional expectations. For youth there, culture is as inflexible to their needs as are government regulations; indeed, one reinforces the other. The result is tragic: a society and its 

culture locked in a rigid position, encased in an unyielding environment—and youth who 

strive to conform to adulthood norms that they fear they will fail to achieve.

In both Burundi and Rwanda, rural and urban youth inhabit constrained, impoverished 

lives. Yet our research unearthed a significant Central African paradox: Rwanda combines a 

closed, conservative culture with a forcefully progressive government, while Burundi has just 

the opposite: a weak government and a more open, progressive culture. 

In Rwanda, the exacting combination of restrictive cultural tradition and controlling 

government behavior rarely allows countervailing or creative forces to surface. To be sure, 

Rwanda’s government is unquestionably more efficient than its Burundian counterpart. 

It is also emphatically committed to long-term national development and has developed 

innovative policies in a wide range of areas. Quite unlike Burundi, things usually get done 

in Rwanda once the government decides to do them. Yet the Rwandan government’s heavyhanded imposition of change and its orientation toward social engineering have yielded 

a mix of substantive government-controlled results (in the area of health insurance, for 

example) alongside the risk aversion and quiet resistance that characterized the actions and 

rationales of its massive youth cohort. In direct contrast, the Burundian state is inefficient 

and far less capable of controlling people’s behavior on its entire territory. While it lacks the 

capacity to deliver services effectively to its population, this situation does leave space for 

Burundian society’s capacity to evolve and adapt, slowly and unevenly. 

The authors are hardly endorsing weak governance. Instead, what we advocate for are 

specific responses to strikingly different contexts in Rwanda and Burundi. Both promise to 

provide space and support for young people to develop their own solutions to the stunning 

challenges they face. We also strongly encourage renewed interest in the plight and perspectives of marginalized youth populations, who too often play a relatively small role in postwar 

worlds, despite their considerable populations. What follows are our recommendations:
 11

Enact different kinds of reform in Rwanda and Burundi. 

•	 The severely constrained environment for male and female youth in rural and urban Rwanda 

calls for a swift response. What is required, at the very least, is to complement Rwanda’s 

economic growth with an immediate opening of society, an elimination of the strict 

regulations that undermine the aims of rural and urban youth, and to direct support to 

youth priorities, beginning with making it possible for male youth to build a house and for 

urban youth to stabilize their lives with decent housing and work in the informal economy 

without harassment from authorities. Government regulations that significantly constrain 

these basic goals must be reformed and perhaps removed. Reforming Rwanda’s confining 

adulthood mandates is a delicate task that first requires open discussion with youth, adults, 

traditional elders, government officials, and nongovernment leaders before next steps are 

considered and tested.

•	 The Burundian context requires a more explicit focus on employment: jobs and job training that 

allow its cohort of increasingly enterprising youth to advance their entrepreneurial aspirations. 

Any activity that provides framework conditions for economic dynamism—improved infrastructure, limited state interventionism, opportunities for credit, access to regional markets—will be 

used by people ready to avail themselves of any opportunity for advancement. 

Conduct qualitative, sector-free research with nonelite, marginalized youth majorities. 

•	 The qualitative approach that our two research endeavors used did not presume the primacy of any particular sector or agenda. Instead, it revealed striking contrasts in the priorities and outlooks of marginalized youth majorities in the countrysides and capital cities of 

two neighboring African nations. We strongly recommend that similar qualitative research 

on marginalized youth perspectives, together with research on the views of adults and 

government officials about youth concerns, be carried out elsewhere—and before plans 

and programs for youth are entertained or implemented.

Notes

The authors thank Ian Bannon, Maria Correia, and Pia Peeters, all from the World Bank, for their generous encouragement 

and unstinting support for the two youth research projects. Neither they nor the World Bank are responsible for the 

content of this article in any way. The responsibility lies entirely with the authors.

1. The proportions for the two countries are virtually identical. The proportion of the Burundian population that is 

under age 30 is 74.9 percent while Rwanda’s is 75 percent. Neighboring Uganda has the youngest population on 

the globe, with 78.2 percent of its population between ages 0 and 29. Elizabeth Leahy, with Robert Engelman, 

Carolyn Gibb Vogel, Sarah Haddock, and Tod Preston, The Shape of Things to Come: Why Age Structure Matters to 

a Safer, More Equitable World (Washington, DC: Population Action International, 2007), 87, 90. 

2. Our research has ultimately resulted in books on, respectively, youth in Burundi and Rwanda: Peter Uvin’s Life 

after Violence: A People’s Story of Burundi (London and New York: Zed Books, 2009) and Marc Sommers’ Stuck: 

Rwandan Youth and the Struggle for Adulthood (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, in association with USIP 

Press, 2011).

3. Ministry of Youth, Culture, and Sports, The Republic of Rwanda Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sports National Youth 

Policy (Kigali: Republic of Rwanda, undated), 9.

4. The Rwandan government is also vigorously enforcing the law that prohibits polygamy.

5. Imidugudu is the plural form of umudugudu in Kinyarwanda. 

6. OZ Architecture, EDAW, Tetra Tech, Sypher, ERA, Geomaps, Engineers without Borders-USA, Water for People, 

“Kigali Master Plan: Existing Conditions Analysis,” draft report prepared for Ministry of Infrastructure, Republic of 

Rwanda, 2006, 52.

7. Alain Durand-Lasserve, “Market–Driven Eviction Processes in Developing Country Cities: The Cases of Kigali in 

Rwanda and Phnom Penh in Cambodia,” Global Urban Development 3, no. 1 (2007): 7.

8. Two hundred Rwandan francs equaled, during the time of research in 2006–07, $0.37 U.S. cents.

9. Uvin, Life after Violence, 126.

10. Ibid., 86. 

11. Ibid., 89.
12. Mats Utas, Sweet Battlefields: Youth and the Liberian Civil War (Uppsala: Uppsala University Dissertations in 

Cultural Anthropology, 2003), 44.

13. Marc Sommers, “Urban Youth in Africa,” Environment & Urbanization 22, no. 2 (October 2010): 324, 325.

14. Rwanda, which had the highest urban growth rate in the world for several years, now has the second-highest 

(6.5 percent). Burundi’s estimated average annual rate is 6.8 percent. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 

State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth (UNFPA, 2007), 90, www.unfpa.org/

swp/swpmain.htm. These countries both were recently among the world’s least urbanized. 

15. Uvin, Life after Violence, 117.

16. Ibid., 105, 119.

17. For related insights, see Omar McDoom, The Micro-Politics of Mass Violence: Authority, Security, and Opportunity in 

Rwanda’s Genocide (doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics submitted to DESTIN, London, December 

2008). 

18. Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” in States, War and 

Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology, ed. Michael Mann (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1988), 1-32.

19. René Lemarchand, Burundi and Rwanda (London: Pall Mall, 1970).

20. Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 

2006), 203.

Of Related Interest

•	 Dowry and Division: Youth and State Building in South Sudan by Marc Sommers and Stephanie Schwartz (Special Report, November 2011)

•	 Youth and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Agents of Change by Stephanie Schwartz (USIP 

Press, 2010)

•	 Making Peace After Genocide: Anatomy of the Burundi Process by Howard Wolpe (Peaceworks, March 2011)

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(www.usip.org), together with additional 

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