A concert-like memorial was held earlier in the week for the 39 lives that lost their lives in Kenya’s anti-government demonstrations. The #RejectFinanceBill2024 demonstration began as a social media campaign to galvanize and mobilize Kenyans to reject a proposed bill sent to the parliament by President William Ruto. Amongst other changes, the contentious legislation proposes introduction of levies that would increase prices of sanitary towels, diapers, electronic devices and bread. It also included raising taxes for data as neighbouring Uganda had done. Kenyan youths staged peaceful protests demanding that the bill be dropped. In the process, many lives were lost.
The Kenyan incident is mirrored across Africa. Actually, the Kenyan story is the Nigerian story and leaders of both countries should be proud that they have assertive youths who civilly express themselves. It is because the youths believe the democratic process that self-corrects itself that they go to the streets to protest.
My point is that protests about any issue are and should be regular features in democracies. Unfortunately, our leaders detest protests. They first pretend as if they never saw it fermenting online, then wave the street protests aside hoping it would fade away. And when the protests persist, they then profile the protesters as sponsored by the opposition as a way of delegitimizing the rallies.
For Kenya, the protesters were mischaracterized as spoilt children carrying expensive phones and driving e-hailing cars. That is a wrong way to view this generation.
They are not called Gen Zs for nothing. They are the digital natives that live their lives on the internet and social media. So owning a good smart phone is most important to them. And it is silly to think it is only comedy skits they watch there. They run online courses, trade crypto, provide content and also get news they would have gotten from conventional sources. Although they have megabytes of data, they live their lives in bits. Their attention spans are too short to stay in an employment for 35 years or listen to a news bulletin for one hour. They surf from one TikTok viral video to another, as they change jobs and careers for the highest bidder. They job differently, they news differently.
Don’t think they are ignorant or uninterested in the political and economic situation of their nation just because they are discussing celebrity weddings. They are equally aware that if Kenyan civil servants work all their lives they would be unable to afford Ruto’s wrist watch or that a Nigerian minister wears Versace Denim worth over $2,000. They are upwardly mobile doing the next professional course or putting their certificates aside to engage in one art or craft including Uber driving. They are not lazy and should not be seen as such.
That we even refer to them as boys, girls, children or kids because the economy keeps them unmarried is a tad disrespectful. They are adults. They are men. They are women. They know what their parents, who were children of farmers, accomplished at 40 and they in their 40s, children of middle class, are frustratingly trying to find their feet.
Unfortunately, powers that be don’t have that sense of urgency to responding to public grievances. What originally started as scrapping of a tax bill spiralled into #RutoMustGo. Recollect, it was the price of bread that triggered the Arab Springs that led to regime change across the Middle East and what started as a protest against Jacob Zuma’s imprisonment was taken over by unemployed South Africans demanding social justice. Protests usual begin from unlikely sources and have lives of their own. Because it is the unscripted moments that make news, protests that morph into revolutions can arise from a disgruntled citizen refusing to come down a telecoms mast because of insecurity and hardship or another counting his losses due to flash floods.
Kenyan youths feel betrayed by Ruto who campaigned on what he would do for them. They voted massively for him in 2022 but now want him out despite his backing down on signing the Finance Bill, conceding to reduction in salaries of elected officials and scrapping budget for First Lady’s office. It only shows #RejectFinanceBill2024 is a culmination of anger for years of unemployment and disenfranchisement from the economic circle. Ruto had allowed it to grow cancerous, now the hands of time cannot be unwound.
The blistering rage of Kenyan youths climbed Kilimanjaro heights after Ruto returned from America. Ruto had received a red carpet welcome. He was the first African leader to be so chorographically received in 18 years. Ruto was accused of chartering a private jet worth millions of Kenyan shillings for the US visit instead of using Kenyan Airways. Ruto had explained that the journey was sponsored by friends. Besides the grandiose display of wealth by public officers who preach austerity to the citizenry, the relationship with the West was questioned. Coincidentally, as Ruto was all smiles with photo-ops in Washington, a senior member of his cabinet was in China talking debts. A finance bill that would have ordinarily gone unnoticed got microscopic scrutiny. The tax hikes were actually government’s way of raising 25% of budget to pay the interest on loans. The emphasis is on “interest on loans”. They have not even started paying the actual loans.
It is sad that Africans continue paying for liabilities naively signed into and imprudently spent by their leaders. African leaders are showing themselves more obligated to their creditors than their citizens. If they are not collecting conditionalities of Western financial institutions, or accepting genetically modified foods or using their citizens for vaccine trials, they are bartering their seaports and airports for Chinese infrastructure. They have literally mortgaged the continent as a commodity.
Does it make sense that Ruto sent Kenyan police officers to Haiti for operations on America’s request but is using the Kenyan military to deal with his own citizens? Or, that there were water cannons to resist protesters but no water to fight the torched parliament?
African youths are not dumb. They are simply fighting for their future. They can’t come to terms seeing their British peers already living in their own houses on reducing mortgages before their 30th birthday while they can’t afford to leave their parents to rent a shared flat. Of what use are African leaders borrowing, travelling for multilateral summits and in South Africa almost half of all graduates that should work are not working while 35% in Egyptian youths are unemployed?
With artificial intelligence, $15 trillion dollars will be added in the global north but Africa is left out. Nairobi is the start-up capital in Africa so these youths want their own share of this money. The onus is on Kenya, Nigeria and the rest of Africa to listen to their youth. Rework their economies from primarily agrarian that is bedevilled with vagaries of insecurity, international-price dependency, land unavailability, inappropriate infrastructure and subsistent to rendering services in technology. These youths have made it easier for their leaders by training themselves on various aspects of it. They have garnered various courses and different degrees and all they need is opportunities for expressions where they can profit thereof with leaders they can trust.
- Okunfolami writes from Festac, Lagos.
