How to navigate a futureless world for the youth

The United Nations (UN) defines youth as those between aged 15 and 24; per the African Youth charter the bracket stretches to age 35. Estimates place upwards of 70 per cent of Africa’s population at age thirty and under. These figures are often bandied about. But even a cursory reflection on the implications is pretty sobering.

As a child of the mid 70s and an idealist, when I reflect on the unhopeful state of the world and society, I am struck by just how much grimmer the prospects are for the youth - especially in our part of the world. Inevitably worse for those that do not belong to the privileged minority classes. In a world with plentiful, such reality is discomfiting to say the least.

Yet discomfiture is not something that a society and peoples that are mostly numbed and soulless care to feel. Too many hitherto ‘abnormal’ things are now normalised and condoned, even celebrated. Such are the times we live in. For most, life’s essence, to experience a dignified human existence is elusive, constantly threatened, devalued and denied.

First, we have endured being ruled by mostly visionless, predominantly older generations of patriarchs that did not get into public life to serve but to reign. After the initial ‘windfall’ of development strides in the immediate post-independence period, the hallmark of our childhood was living through the worst of the austerity programs of the 1980s/90s - which coincided with a pivotal life phase requiring essential investments to secure quality of life.

Low quality education

Austerity translated for the majority into, low quality education, lack or limited access to life giving or sustaining nutrition and healthcare, poor living and sanitary conditions, grim employment prospects and so on. The imprint of austerity is a lifelong legacy of deprivation and inequities, lives prematurely nipped in the bud and unimaginable foregone possibilities. We bore the brunt of the HIV pandemic (before life-saving antiretrovirals arrived on the scene courtesy of determined struggles calling out greedy multinational pharmaceuticals and uncaring governments to shame).

Secondly, for about half of the populace who are female, the pervasiveness of patriarchy means that no matter how much you defy odds in a quest to excel, you remain effectively relegated and suppressed into the lesser human. This manifests in both the public and private spheres of life.

Thirdly, if you invested your youth in the struggles for human dignity and a better society, it is humbling to watch the fruits of those struggles constantly reneged upon and undermined.

Even from a position of relative privilege (owing to a reasonable level of education and decent opportunities to navigate life), I shudder to think what most youthful persons in our part of the world must feel when they ponder their circumstances and prospects.

For starters, given today’s realities and imperatives, to still be saddled with disconnected, uncaring leaders (actually rulers) and regimes that are often, always entirely clueless, callous and unbothered; within the confines of predatory states and increasingly soulless societies with predominantly absentee, pre-occupied or ‘spaced out’ parenting and value-less socialization must be a super scary place to be! Add to this, mostly irrelevant training/schooling that is out of sync with ‘conventional’ imperatives; climate change dynamics; scenarios of deadly pandemics; complex war prospects - and the sense of futureless-ness is complete.

 Hopelessness

Faced with grim hopelessness and futureless-ness at home, many youth seek opportunities abroad.

In this regard, what might ‘future-proofing’ the word for youth entail? What might I (have) invest(ed) my intellect, energy and passions on if I were dealt these cards?

Seems to me that seizing control of agenda setting and governance (plus leadership) is non-negotiable. Youth must take this on as a fight to secure needs, interests and survival. They have to essentially seize their destiny in their own hands - no matter the counter forces. They have no choice because their actual lives and semblance of survival depend on it. It cannot be ‘normalized that those living on ‘borrowed time’ are allowed to essentially rob the youth of their lives and future.

I say this based on my active footprint (during my youth no less) on the costly (in terms of lives lost in that struggle) but totally worthwhile journey that delivered Kenya’s revolutionary and dignity affirming constitution. It is no wonder this governance road map remains under-implemented and much fought.

In exercising the right to active citizenship, youth must leverage all they can - available tech in its many facets and possibilities; out of the box thinking, tapping into the disposition of being unshackled by properness, conformity or shame - to forge broad and formidable alliances across class, gender and other identities- to speak and act truth to power. It is to be unbowed and fearless, for they have nothing to lose. Without a doubt. Passively waiting for saviours is not an option. For there are none but yourselves.

Ms Ndomo is a Social Policy consultant with a keen interest in political economy