Generation Z, often called ‘Gen Z’, are youths born in the late 1990s and early 2010s who grew up during the era of the internet and social media boom. They are thus familiar with internet-connected computers and other gadgets used for inter-personal communication, and they depend heavily on the internet as a source of information.
Africa, one of the less developed continents, is grappling with a deficiency in the technology that supports the internet. Only a few African countries have made the internet accessible and affordable for their citizens, enabling them to exchange ideas with other people across the world via social media.
Even in places where internet and social media access is available, only a few members of Gen Z use these facilities for business and academic research. Most use it only for gossip and internet fraud. This has become a problem for African governments and for the international community.
Problems in Nigeria
One example is Nigeria where some Gen Zs indulge in advance fee fraud – popularly known as ‘Yahoo-Yahoo’ in the local parlance. This has become a thorn in the government’s flesh and a great concern to individual citizens. These youths defraud their victims and net huge sums in foreign currency. They then flaunt their ill-gotten wealth on social media and in their communities.
It is disheartening to see that some of these Yahoo boys are praised both by their parents and by elders in their communities, instead of being asked how they got such wealth. The craze for materialism has blinded the minds of the elders, and moral decadence is on the rise.
The South African experience
Another vexing issue relating to these Gen Zs, is the way they allow themselves to be used by ethnic and religious influencers to cause mayhem in society. Since they are young and filled with youthful exuberance, they become easy tools in the hands of ethnic and religious champions who lead them to cause havoc in society.
In South Africa there has been a wave of xenophobic attacks by youths. It is estimated that between 1994 and 2024 these attacks resulted in 669 deaths, 5,310 looted shops and 127,572 displacements in South Africa.
The youths have been misinformed about workers from other African countries. They believe foreigners take both their jobs and their beautiful ladies. This craze went viral in major South African cities with the result that some foreign nationals were beaten to death, burnt alive, maimed, harassed, and driven away with little or no government intervention to stop the carnage.
These South African Gen Zs failed to note that during the apartheid era some of the African countries from which these workers come stood by them against all forms of oppression. These Gen Z crimes may in fact have been instigated by older citizens who do not wish to be identified.
Unrest in Kenya
In Kenya, we saw how Gen Zs were misled into fighting inter-ethnic wars following the 2007/8 presidential elections. Hundreds were killed due to a perception that the election had been rigged.
As if that was not enough, we have just witnessed another Gen Z uprising – in protest over the government’s finance law which they believed would create more hardship for the masses. Youths took to the streets in Kenyan cities, protesting and destroying/looting government and private property.
Unfortunately, some of these irate youths were killed by security forces, but the craze did not stop until the government cut some governance costs and introduced major reforms to calm the restless youths.
Common factors
There is something central to all the Gen Z struggles in Africa. It is the internet on which they depend to spread their activism. But many participants fail to verify their sources of information on the internet before taking action, and this ends up causing pain and regret to some of these Gen Zs.
Generally, Gen Zs need to be guided on how to use the internet to communicate effectively and efficiently without taking the law into their own hands. The older generation has failed in that regard because they saw modern technology as a positive benefit which would make people’s activities faster and simpler. But in Africa Gen Z have been left to use the internet and social media unguided and unsupervised at the risk of destroying themselves and society.
Action needed
Africa is not the only continent that has a good number of children born in the late 1990s and early 2010s. But in Europe and Asia Gen Zs are engaged in more productive ventures. This is because those that came before them were able to teach Gen Z the etiquette of using the internet and social media.
Africa needs to put measures in place to re-orient and re-educate her Gen Zs to follow the right protocols when using the Internet/social media so that they can have meaningful and suitable engagements within the global space.