Prime
Kenya ‘uprising’ and the bigger story
Protesters make signs with their arms in front of Kenya police officers during a demonstration against tax hikes as Members of the Parliament debate the Finance Bill 2024 in downtown Nairobi, on June 18, 2024. Kenyan police fired tear gas and arrested dozens of demonstrators on June 18, 2024 as hundreds of people gathered near the Parliament building to protest tax hikes. Photo | AFP
What you need to know:
- On the continent, we tend to see that economics is the defining issue. White America and Europe might worry about being overrun by black and brown immigrations, or Muslims, ageing and dwindling populations, but not us. We have too many people. The fight is over how to feed them.
I had an interesting conversation with an outspoken African intellectual on Kenya’s Gen Z protests. He rejects being called wise, calling it cheap flattery. The correct description is “contrarian”, he said. Meet African Contraria:.
Charles Onyango-Obbo (COO): You described the demonstrations of young Kenyans, Generation Z, which started primarily as tax protests, as “the trees, not the forest” of the events shaking up the world. I want us to talk about Africa, but tell me this story of the world first.
Contrarian Africa (CA): First, we have a global climate crisis; the hottest temperatures and floods in over 100 years, or longer, in some places. Global powers are in turbulence, shaken by forces on both the extreme left and right. We have the largest migrations since the World War II period. Populists, anarchists, extreme leftist and anarchist forces from the US, Europe, the Middle East, to Africa are tearing the political and economic orders of the last 70 years. We have the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, the Sudan war, and the Myanmar war, we have nearly 2 million people in China’s Uighur internment camps, it is terrible.
COO: But the Kenya Gen Z protests, at least in the initial stages, were very programmatic; high taxes, corruption, waste. They didn’t make world order-changing demands, which might explain their early success.
CA: Yes, but tax, state budgets, and corruption in Africa have to be seen as a symbol of the most vexed issue of the time; how the wealth and opportunities created in the post-Cold War era are divided. On the continent, we tend to see that economics is the defining issue. White America and Europe might worry about being overrun by black and brown immigrations, or Muslims, ageing and dwindling populations, but not us. We have too many people. The fight is over how to feed them.
COO: How and when do we come out at the other end?
CA: My “the other end” is not tomorrow. I think we shall begin to see outcomes from 2035 on. Between now and then, a lot of things will burn, and it will be bad. The failure of the current political class, in many ways, is necessary. Governments that fail to deal with climate change, grow economies, and secure peace, will collapse. History has been advanced as much by venal, incompetent, and corrupt leaders as by great statesmen. Empires like Rome and others didn’t fall because of defeat on the battlefields, but because of the depravity of the rulers in the palaces back home. Millions will die, and there will be a lot of suffering, but because the systems we have will be so discredited or withered, it offers a chance to build new ones. Imagine Donald Trump as president, which is very likely, he will be the undertaker for Pax-Americana. That is a good thing. There will be openings for new powers on the world stage. This will be how Africa gets on that stage.
COO: Really? Where are the signs of hope?
CA: The hope is in the crises themselves. In Kenya, we now have a body of evidence from good practice in five or so devolved counties, and we can build on that. The untenable African debt burden and rising poverty are a strong signal that the model we have, borrowing from both internal and external sources to fund development is broken. I see the attraction of social democratic models growing. We might have more creative public-private partnerships, and I believe we will see reforms towards smaller central governments. One drawback is that because the best examples we are getting are from either small countries like Seychelles and Mauritius, or those with big land sizes and small populations like Namibia and Botswana, there is a tendency to say they are atypical, and their approaches can’t work for bigger more diverse countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, or South Sudan.
COO: Isn’t it a contradiction to speak of smaller central governments and political class, and their being able to project power on a new global stage?
CA: Not exactly. The wombs of African women will win this one for us. First, for Africa, by 2050 its population will reach close to 2.5 billion, more than 25 per cent of the world’s population. Most young people in the world will be African. There will be a lot of power from having many warm bodies.
COO: Explain.
CA: Many people usually talk of youth dividends, labour, and economic consumption. Yes, you won’t be able to sell baby formula or diapers in old Italy or Japan but think of things like sports. As technology, robots, and AI take over our lives, it will create a lot of time. That will go into things like sports, and most active sport is for young people. If you think of what the Olympic Games will look like in 2060, up to 75 per cent of the athletes on the field and track could be black or brown. It will tell you how world power is divided and held.
