By 2035, more young Africans will enter the workforce each year than in the rest of the world combined, according to the World Economic Forum. This youth bulge represents a wellspring for boundless innovation and enterprise. In recent weeks, it has also shown itself to be something else – a force for integrity.
In Nigeria, protesters on Thursday launched a weeklong campaign across Africa’s most populous nation to “end bad governance.” The spark is economic misery. Prices for basic goods have reached a 30-year high in real terms. One in 6 children face acute malnutrition, up 25% from a year ago.
Yet as the name of the marches indicates, Nigerians are looking deeper than their immediate needs. “The integrity of our institutions is in question, and it is imperative to restore trust and confidence so that citizens can once again believe in their country,” Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, executive director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, told the Daily Independent.
What are known as Nigeria’s Generation Z protests follow similar youth-led demands elsewhere in Africa. Last week, anti-corruption demonstrations in Uganda resulted in scores of arrests. Those came after June protests in Kenya over a proposed tax hike to fund debt payments; the government backed down, promising to address the debt through spending cuts instead. “The biggest grievance is the conspicuous consumption of the [President William] Ruto regime,” John Githongo, a former anti-corruption czar in Kenya, told The Economist.
The push for honest governance reflects an attitudinal shift across the continent as better-educated Africans demand more from elected leaders. That is the conclusion in the latest survey by Afrobarometer. It found that “Africans want more democratic governance than they are getting, and the evidence suggests that nurturing support for democracy will require strengthening integrity in local government and official accountability.”
The 55-nation African Union devoted this year’s African Anti-Corruption Day, on July 11, to protecting whistleblowers. It urged member states to “promote the exposure of corruption offenders.” One anti-corruption program in Nigeria run by the London-based think tank Chatham House, however, shows why citizens hold the key to more honest governance.
“Anti-corruption efforts are far more likely to succeed when they’re driven by the community itself rather than being imposed from the top,” says Raj Navanit Patel, a lead researcher on the project. When ordinary citizens insist on honesty and accountability, he told a panel discussion last month, they “see integrity and ethical behavior as the kind of norm, and corruption as socially unacceptable. That leads to a more enduring kind of social change.”
Across Africa, from Nigeria to Kenya, citizens are telling officials to take note. Their expectations for integrity in public service have changed.