Envisioning and Creating Futures Growing up on the Streets of African Cities

Young people living and working on the streets of sub-Saharan African cities have complex and mutable relationships with the future. Social and economic marginalisation constrains agency and results in futures split between meeting short-term needs, to ensure safety and survival, and imagined destinations of adulthood, where situations of poverty and risk are resolved. Constructing a future is contingent not only on immediate and changing circumstances but is also an instrument of self-efficacy, where imagination enables individuals to cope with danger and uncertainty in the present. This chapter draws from in-depth qualitative research undertaken with children and youth growing up on the streets in the three African cities of Accra, Harare, and Bukavu. It explores the tensions in making a future, the compromises driven by poverty, and the ways in which imagined futures are mobilised to inform decision-making in the present. The chapter shows how young people living on the streets vary and delay their plans to deal with short-term challenges. It also examines how visions of future adulthood, where young people have secured social status and stability, both have essential utility for coping in the present and provide important insights into the realities of everyday life.