Youth Transitions in the Drylands: Gendered Rights in Land Access and Control

Feb 26, 2020 | Esther Njuguna, Shambel Getachew, Brenda BoonaBaana, Dismas Mwaseba, and Eleanor Mavis
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In 2019, the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals (CRP-GLDC) initiated a study to understand ‘youth realities, youth aspirations and youth opportunity structures’ in the drylands of East Africa for a background paper to support the designing of a CRP-GLDC youth strategy.  One of the issues coming out as a strong area of focus is the aspect of ‘youth transition’ and how this gendered process is leading to different realities for boys and girls in the rural dryland areas. 

The standard path/pipeline for transition from the childhood to adulthood stages is the ‘education program or systems’ where children go through pre-primary primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and then enter the job market either as employees or entrepreneurs at an age of about 24-25 years.  This is often the ideal pipeline.  Nevertheless, ‘leaks’ do happen along this pipeline: some children never get into this pipeline while those that do, keep dropping off at different points due to various factors.