In 2014, there were 1.8 billion young people aged 10-24 years globally, 16% of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Young people are met with significant technological advancement but also constraints in securing stable livelihoods and broader cultural and societal changes. While praised for their ingenuity and resourcefulness, young people also face high expectations and judgment, both in terms of their capacity to contribute to their communities and in maintaining the moral and societal fabric. We conducted a photovoice exercise with 16 adult men aged 22 to 42 in Mwanza, Tanzania. After two days of training, participants were given nine days to take pictures of their family lives, activities outside their home and what is important to them. Thereafter, they were asked to choose, rank and provide captions for 25 photos and interviewed about their choices. The interviews were recorded, summarised, and analysed thematically. Young people, capturing anyone from a teenager to a 25-year-old, emerged as a key theme in all interviews and photographs. Other key themes in relation to young people were livelihood opportunities, with a strong connotation on 'hard work'; education, with an emphasis on the importance of letting young people attend school; gender equality in respect to fair distribution of household chores and women working to supplement family income; recreational activities and challenging environments for young men, capturing bad nutrition, poor road conditions, harmful work and living conditions, as well as decaying morals. Overall, adult participants both admired young men and women for their energy and innovation while also expecting them to prescribe to existing moral and community standards. Understanding the high expectations and concerns of adults and how those shape the environment in which young people transition into adulthood is key to develop programmes for young people by considering their local context.
Keywords: Adolescents; Tanzania; education; livelihood; photovoice.