Deconstructing the “young people” category in Africa, in order to place its study on new foundations: such is the aim of this anthropological essay. Understood through its emergence and its historical establishment, particularly during the sequences of events that followed decolonisation, the “young person” category is separated out from the tangle of connected concepts (cadet social, junior, young generation), enriched with components of its construction that have gone unnoticed (calendar age, demographic and political category), explored taking account of the uncertainty surrounding the delimitations and characterisations of that phase of human development. Thus comparatively re-characterised, the means of another interpretation of the “young people” category appeared, making it possible at once to conceive of the heterogeneity of this category, to apprehend its underlying dynamics, and to sketch angles of approach for new studies.