When young Tanzanians poured into the streets on 29 October 2025, most observers saw an election protest. Protests in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and other cities were met with live ammunition and internet blackouts. There were hundreds of casualties, according to human rights organisations.
My research suggests a deeper dynamic: a generation asserting their right to become adults.
As a PhD candidate, I set out in 2020 to understand how Tanzania’s natural gas industry was shaping young people’s transitions to adulthood. My research examined two interconnected questions. How does the gas industry shape youth transitions and experiences in Mtwara, a resource rich region, particularly in the context of unmet development promises? And how do young people themselves navigate and shape development narratives tied to natural gas extraction?
I found that youth transitions to adulthood are closely tied to commodity cycles: while the gas boom of 2010 briefly expanded pathways to employment, independence and social recognition, the subsequent downturn left many young people in prolonged “waithood”.
This broader pattern of blocked transitions helps explain why youth-led protests such as those on 29 October resonate so deeply.
Blocked transitions to adulthood
My research lasted 15 months between 2020 and 2022. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork focused on young people aged 20-35. I began fieldwork in Mtwara region just as the gas sector entered a “gas bust”. This was a dramatic reversal from the earlier “gas rush” of 2010-2015. The 2010 discovery of offshore natural gas had generated enormous expectations. Then president Jakaya Kikwete promised “Mtwara will be the new Dubai”.
Young people saw prospects for industrialisation, jobs and economic independence. These were necessary to marry, build homes and establish themselves as adults. But by 2015, contractual disputes between the Tanzanian government and international oil companies, combined with falling global commodity prices, halted exploration. The promised transformation never materialised.
I documented how the gas sector’s boom-bust cycle shaped young people’s economic strategies and life trajectories.
Understanding what adulthood means in Tanzania requires recognising it as more than just age. It requires overcoming structural barriers to employment, housing and family formation, and being able to marry, start a family, and establish an independent household. Achieving these milestones enables the social and cultural responsibilities of adulthood. These include gaining respect, supporting extended family and participating meaningfully in community life. Tanzania’s National Youth Development Policy defines youth as those up to age 35. That is over one-third of the population and nearly two-thirds of the labour force. For many young Tanzanians, the markers of adulthood remain perpetually out of reach.
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My fieldwork revealed three interconnected dynamics that help explain both the everyday crisis young people face and the mobilisation on 29 October.
First, the crisis is not only about unemployment. It is about blocked adulthood. Young people I worked with understood clearly that Tanzania is not a poor country. They see natural resources extracted, infrastructure projects announced, and political elites displaying wealth on social media. From their perspective, their stalled transitions are not the result of national scarcity. They are born from a system in which political and social connections shape who benefits from public investment.
The economic reality reinforces this perception. Street vending, casual labour, motorcycle taxi driving and short-term contracts provide survival income. This is rarely enough to save, secure housing, or plan for family life. In Mtwara, young people watched offshore gas extraction generate capital flows with minimal local employment. Beyond the initial construction phase, the highly technical nature of operations excluded many from core jobs and from ancillary sectors operating in their own region.
Second, educational credentials have proved insufficient to overcome structural barriers. Many young people in their late twenties and thirties held secondary diplomas or tertiary certificates. They were unable to secure stable employment that would enable them to attain recognised markers of adulthood. What emerged was a prolonged phase of waithood: a social limbo in which young people cannot fully claim adult status or access the respect and authority associated with it.
Thirdly, prolonged exclusion generates political consciousness, not only frustration. When young people cannot meet the economic and social criteria for adulthood, their claims to full citizenship are weakened. Their voices carry less weight, their grievances are dismissed, and their participation is treated as peripheral. Economic precarity, in this sense, translates into civic marginalisation.
During my study young people frequently referred to the 2013 and 2014 gas protests. These followed the government’s decision to pipe newly discovered gas to Dar es Salaam rather than process it locally. The demonstrations became a defining political moment in the region. In conversations, they were described as about more than employment. They were framed as claims to recognition and inclusion in national development.
The 29 October protests follow a similar pattern: blocked economic futures translating into collective mobilisation for political recognition.
Why October 2025 became a breaking point
October 2025 brought together the structural conditions I documented between 2020 and 2022 with a tightening of political controls. In the months preceding the election, opposition leaders were jailed or barred from contesting, and reports of abductions and targeted violence circulated widely. President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner with 97.66% of the vote.
In my fieldwork, economic and political exclusion were consistently discussed as intertwined. Conversations about employment and income were frequently accompanied by concerns about voice and representation – perceptions of not being heard by authorities. These discussions reflected a broader sense that both economic mobility and political participation were constrained.
Seen in this context, the October protests reflected longer-term frustrations rooted in stalled transitions to adulthood and limited access to stable employment. They were linked not only to electoral developments but to perceptions of unequal access to opportunity and national resources.
The state’s response followed patterns observed in earlier episodes of unrest in Mtwara. Security operations were concentrated in neighbourhoods where protests had taken place. Reports suggested an uneven use of force, with young men disproportionately affected. When further demonstrations were called for 9 December, they did not materialise.
The structural conditions shaping prolonged waithood and youth disillusionment, however, remain in place.
From this perspective, youth protest is tied to how young people attempt to secure economic independence, social recognition and meaningful inclusion under constrained conditions. Where pathways to adulthood remain uncertain, mobilisation becomes one of the few visible ways to assert presence and claim belonging.