WHAT OTHERS SAY: Why the youth won’t tweet the revolution

Africa’s young people have been giving elders sleepless nights since the uprisings (in north Africa the Arab Springs) that ousted dictators Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

The ripples set off by the Arab Spring, also led later in 2011 with the ouster, and gruesome lynching, of the continent’s most entrenched strongman, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, after he had been on the throne for 41 years! The revolutionary winds didn’t cross the Sahara desert very well. By the time they got to sub-Saharan Africa, they had lost a bit of steam, and leaders too had managed to reposition to cover themselves.

Thus in Kenya, the “Kazi za Vijana” (youth work) programme, that came to be after the 2008 post-election violence, was put on steroids.

Tunisia, where the Uprising was born, started paying unemployment benefits under the “Amal” programme worth $144 a month, and launched a youth enterprise fund worth billions of dollars.

In Uganda, the government unveiled a “job stimulus programme.”

Mauritania set up a fund to sponsor profit-making initiatives by young people in sport, culture.

South Africa created a $1.3 billion kitty for job creation for youth. In Angola, Mozambique, governments were offering up some kind of social bribery.

In Burkina Faso, though, it didn’t work out. In 2014 a youth-led ousted strongman Blaise Compoaré after 27 years in power.

The picture has since become decidedly more complicated, and nowhere is it more apparent than during elections.

In Kenya, following the September 1 ruling by the Supreme Court which annulled the August presidential election, on the streets, and particularly on social media, youth are the frontline warriors for both President Uhuru Kenyatta’s side, and the opposition NASA camp of Raila Odinga.

But they not only split along those two sides. Many are also in the middle, and as soon as you begin talking about the election drama, they get a massive attack of yawning. They wouldn’t care less if Uhuru or Raila were president.

There is a sense, then, then the youth have abandoned an independent “revolutionary” path, and become political hirelings or, as the leftists like to say derisively, “running dogs” for old political, and even, tribal interests.

But that might too simplistic. Many interesting things have happened. While the quality of governments in Africa and their ability to deliver jobs and services have not improved dramatically since 2011, the grounds which gave birth to the Springs have changed.

Many factors, including China, have contributed to this in both positive and negative ways. For example, a dress that many small traders used to buy in Dubai for, say, $3 (Ksh300 today) and sell for Ksh400, can be bought for $1 in a far-flung Chinese sweatshop town for $0.50 and sold for Ksh200 in a market in Machakos.

The same has happened to a lot of other things from flasks to bathroom towels. While more people can now afford stuff, a whole layer of small and medium-size traders who had done well from the Dubai stream has been wiped out. The floor Chinese prices have, for the first time, also presented the East African Asian community with an adversary they can’t beat, and they have taken a huge hit. The political result of this and other factors is that the power of the state has increased, because both small and big contracts have been more valuable and predictable business than fighting the Shanghai merchants.

With that, the market for supporting politicians has become more precious as a source of prospects for young people, as it has for many other people.

While from a rhetorical point of view, we still argue that regimes that don’t address youth opportunities place themselves in greater peril, the opposite seems to be true. Governments have become like the extremely eligible bachelors in the small town, who don’t have to try very hard to get a worthy bride.

Sorry to say, but their ability to mobilise youth subservience could have increased.

But because they can afford a little more complacency, a lot of the post-Arab Spring youth programmes have been allowed to taper off leading to greater alienation. Hence that larger number of young people in the middle who think politicians are useless, and have no answers to their problems.

So, at the end of the day, whichever side they fall on, they are victims of the same forces sweeping the continent.