Gigi Ibrahim waves the egyptian flag in Tahrir Square, February 3, 2011. Creative Commons photo by Al Jazeera English

In the search for underlying causes of the Middle-Eastern revolts, food, technology, Twitter, and social media have been identified as possible suspects. Last week, Dylan Robertson argued here that these are in fact food revolutions—that drastically increasing food prices had worn away at citizens (commenter Jen Hassum said that “bread determinism” wasn’t entirely true either; I think we can agree that people act for all kinds of individual reasons). Recently scholars and journalists have focused instead on a specific demographic that is determined to initiate change. Recent Time Magazine and BusinessWeek cover stories refer to the “ticking time bomb” of youth unemployment in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Iran.

There is a large part of the Middle East and North Africa, about 16 countries, were more the half the population is under 30 years of age. That’s six out of every ten people. This is what has been dubbed the “youth bulge.” Millions of young people throughout the Middle East have been too frustrated for too long with the constraints of their government and lack of future job prospects. The sense of hopelessness, stemming from over education and limited employment opportunities has reached a breaking point.

With governments who neglect to invest in the younger generation, and weak economies and industries, (the largest Tunisian industries are agriculture, tourism, mining and textiles), possibilities for the future have seemed very bleak.

The highest youth unemployment rates are in north Africa and the Middle East, at 24 per cent each. In December 2010, 18 percent of 16 to 24-year-olds in the U.S. were unemployed. 11 percent of young Canadian were unemployed in 2007, and the The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts that globally this rate will steadily increase until the end of 2011.

Though miles away, young Canadian and American university grads know the sting of applying to dozens of jobs and hearing back from none. Many attribute this brick wall to the older generation of workers who are holding on to their jobs; some cite the faster pace of business today, which doesn’t have time or resources to train fresh workers.

So without any job prospects, the large population of unemployed youth are forced to work informal low paying jobs, create employment for themselves, or, of course, wait until the recession ends and their elders retire. There’s a sense of helplessness out there.

Young people therefore either end up living at home or heading back to school, with free time to grow increasingly frustrated and depressed. Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s strategy to deal with youth unemployment was to increase college enrolments. But more education creates more people who aren’t OK with blind obedience to their government. Jack A. Goldstone, a sociologist at George Mason University School of Public Policy quoted in that BusinessWeek article, feels that democracies are “much better at managing large numbers of highly educated people. Spain’s youth unemployment is even higher than Egypt’s, but young Spaniards aren’t trying to overthrow the government.”

Yet another road block for this eager generation, is the fact that they are attempting to enter the job force in a recovering economy. A 2009 study called Growing up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy, looks at the connection between macroeconomic experience and individual attitude constructed during the ‘formative’ years (18-24). Individuals that live through a recession during these years are more likely to “believe that luck rather than effort is the most important driver of individual success, support more government redistribution, and have less confidence in institutions.”

For now, thousands of Egyptian youth feel good about what they have accomplished the first steps towards change  on their own terms—and without the meddling of the West. The next question is how Egypt, Tunisia, and their neighbours will begin to address the acute need for adequate work for their revolutionary generation.

Media determinists of all stripes have hailed the role of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in prompting the recent pan-Arab revolts. Though it could be argued that these revolts were bound to happen eventually, the catalyst isn’t likely social media — it’s food.

One of the main causes of the French Revolution was a combination of a mismanaged economy and climate change that resulted in soaring bread prices. The Egyptian uprisings have been compared to the French Revolution by many columnists (and the comparison dismissed, as well). On the same note, The Daily Telegraph declared the events in Tunisia and Egypt to be “food revolutions.”

The cost of food is on the rise, with devastating impacts across the Global South. At the start of a recent podcast episode, NPR’s Planet Money discussed the rising cost of wheat, which makes up roughly 70 percent of bread prices in Egypt but only two percent in the U.S.

The Western world tends to feel less impact in fluctuation of food commodities because so much of the cost of food goes to packaging, marketing and processing. In addition, Western countries have stockpiles of grain unimaginable in the developing world.

Planet Money also gives a comprehensive breakdown of just how crazy worldwide changes in food costs have been and what’s causing them. As one of our most basic needs, food plays a huge role in security and diplomacy.

After wheat prices jumped 25 per cent in one day in 2008, the UN held a food security summit in Rome and urged governments to invest in agriculture. The conference’s final declaration warned of disastrous crises that were not just looming, but well under way.

Food and famine has driven much of the world’s relations with North Korea. Meanwhile China — estimated to supply North Korea with 40 percent of its food — faces its worst drought in 60 years.

Last summer’s Russian forest fires resulted in a shortfall of tonnes of grain, prompting Putin to halt wheat exports for both 2010 and 2011 harvests. This summer we’ll learn the impact of this change, along with the effects of flooding in Pakistan and Australia, as well as natural disasters in numerous other countries.

Meanwhile, the cost of food continues to reach historic highs, which Bill Clinton believes could worsen if companies use too many crops for biofuels.

Unless climate change gets under control and we use food resources more efficiently, we can expect more such revolutions in the years to come.

[Creative Commons photo by Flickr user adactio]