Book Review: The Outcast Majority: War, Development, and Youth in Africa by Marc Sommers
Anthropologist Marc Sommers has spent decades thinking and writing about youth in Africa, frequently while working as a consultant for government and NGO clients. He has written about Education for All in conflict-affected countries for the World Bank, about schooling in South Sudan for UNESCO, and about peace education for refugee youth for the United Nations Refugee Agency. His other books include Fear in Bongoland, which is about Burundian refugees living in urban Tanzania, and Stuck, which describes the barriers Rwandan youth face trying to attain adulthood. In The Outcast Majority, he has brought these strands together and written a career-summarizing book. The book details the vast gap between outcast youth in war-affected Africa and the international development enterprise.