Youth, Associational Life and Civic Engagement in Northern Cameroon: Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada

This article analyses the ways in which youths in Northern Cameroon have been able to access social citizenship. Tracing the nature of this access over an extended period – from the early 1990s to the mid-2020s – I underline the importance of youth civic engagement through associational life. Associational life is a hidden or covert way of engaging in politics, and leads to a reinvention of their interaction with hegemonic power, as they are not positioning themselves as moral stakeholders in their community. Drawing on a case study involving the members of the Association des Jeunes Élèves et Étudiants de la Faada, with longitudinal ethnographic data combined with interviews, the article articulates changes and continuities in civic engagement, based on learning by doing through discursive practices (in street parliaments), physical practices (amateur football clubs) and associative practices (in non-profit associations).