For discussion this week is a work-in-progress book proposal based on research conducted for a PhD thesis at ODID. The book, titled Making Revolutionary Youth, sheds new light onto African socialism through an examination of one of its most cherished subjects: ‘the youth.’ Most independence regimes on the African continent imagined their path to a post-colonial future through generational change. For many of the 35 (out of 53) regimes that called themselves socialist at some point between 1960-1980, however, ‘youth’ not only symbolized moving beyond colonial orders, but the birth of a New Socialist Society. Through a detailed study of one of Africa’s most outspokenly Marxist-Leninist regimes – Mozambique under Samora Machel (1975-1986) – Making Revolutionary Youth examines how African post-colonial states attempted to “forge” entire generations into Socialist New Men and Women. Drawing on a wide range of untapped archival, media and oral history sources, it is the first to shed light onto the manifold ways in which the Machel regime drew on local as well as transnational socialist discursive and pedagogical repertoires to instil a new political, social and moral values into a generation of Mozambicans.