Social media: Unsung youth leadership that could yet save a continent

The tax protests in Kenya led by Generation Z urban youth have quietened down after the government withdrew the financial bill that drew their ire. The Gen Zers won emphatically and have now retreated to their habitat on social media where it all began, pledging to keep a close eye on the truce amid other unrelated demands. This has thrust the Kenya situation into something of a template; the conditions that made the youth protests successful could happen elsewhere in Africa, including in social development. Some of the reasons the protests attracted such wide local and international media attention include the novelty that they started on social media by youth previously thought apathetic to political involvement, before exploding onto the streets of Nairobi and numerous other cities around the country. ALSO READ: Kenya: President Ruto announces austerity measures Another reason pertains to what the pickets portended for governance in Kenya with the storming of the parliament and, by extension, to regional stability should the country go down. Passenger buses from Kigali and Kampala and elsewhere had already paused their journeys because of the protests. The point, however, is that with its democratic credentials, no matter their imperfections, and its dominant economy, Kenya remains an anchor nation in the region. With the protests gone, the threat of instability has now been allayed and remarked with relief internationally, including by the US. What remains firmly with us is the reality of how social media has become everyday life, and specifically how it has become a potent ground where likely movements can be hatched and rehearsed before actualising on the streets. Some had said it had started spontaneously, but youthful resentment of a perceived unresponsive government to their needs had been percolating for years before the contentious bill provided a vent for their frustrations. Something, however, seemed not to have been appreciated – leadership. It is true that the protests were leaderless, at least initially, and that they grew organically. Still, they must have taken some planning. Someone must have taken the initiative to plan or offer some sort of leadership, even if inadvertently. Shadrack Kiprono – a millennial, it turns out, and a supervisor at his place of employment – is one of the young men credited with initiating the protest movement on social media before it took a life of its own, as he narrated in a Citizen TV programme. He did not expect it would become nationwide, nor did he intend it to take the shape it took, infiltrated by the violent interlopers who looted and burned. There are numerous such youth leaders strewn all over the continent. A 2018 report by the African Leadership Institute notes that over 700,000 young Africans had been exposed to some form of leadership initiative as of that year. The figure must have grown, and I am willing to bet there are many more hundreds of thousands not in any formal initiative as the ALI that are born leaders. Every village has them. Not to belabour the point, if, for the sake of argument, we take the 700,000 and assume each of the 54 countries on the continent has an equal share of the young leaders, it would calculate to around 13,000 in each country. We can reasonably assume that, reflecting their demographic as studies show, not all of them are politically engaged or even angry enough to have poured out on the streets. But there were those in the protests shown on local and international media who could easily be picked out by how they carried themselves to merit a radio or TV interview and, perhaps more ominously, attract the alleged government targeting. These are the young leaders, some perhaps not even aware of their leadership, who might lead the next social media-seeded anti-government charge somewhere in Africa. And yet Kenya is not the first and follows an already known pattern described as a leaderless and horizontal organisational model – the horizontal aspect meaning they spread without any sort of hierarchy. Aside from Kenya, examples of such horizontal youth-led protests include the Arab Spring, the #EndSARS movement in Nigeria, and the #FeesMustFall movement in South Africa. Some, like the 2019 protests in Sudan, offer valuable lessons. Led by young people and mobilised through social media, the protests were hijacked by the Sudan military, ironically resulting in the civil war racking the country. Such co-optation or hijacking by politicians or governments is quite common around Africa to neutralise or exploit them, with the effect that youth protests rarely succeed, if at all. As for the Gen Z protests in Kenya, it would be too early to say whether its example of the new age social media, tribeless and issue-based political action prove their worth. We shall have to wait and see.

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Social media: Unsung youth leadership that could yet save a continent