Kenya unrest: a warning for Africa's future?

"Don't trust anyone over 30" was the rallying cry of the 1960s youth counter-culture movement. Now, 60 years on, anger at unemployment, debt and decades of corruption is fuelling a wave of youth protests in Kenya that have the potential to spread across the continent.

Considered one of East Africa's "more economically developed and democratically stable countries", Kenya has in recent weeks been rocked by a "political crisis that reveals the deep cracks in both sides of that stability", said Vox.

Many are now wondering whether it could herald the start of Africa's long predicted "youth rebellion", said The Sunday Times: "an Arab Spring-style uprising driven more by economic need than a hunger for democracy".

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What did the commentators say?

Several economic factors have come together in Kenya, creating the "perfect storm" for mass protests in recent weeks, said Professor X.N. Iraki, a business professor at the University of Nairobi, on The Conversation.

Kenya's Gen Z have "borne the brunt of the country's slow economic growth", leading to higher unemployment rates, reduced income levels, higher levels of debt, and lower living standards overall. While corruption has been a long-standing problem, the figure of the "tenderpreneur" – those who make money by fraudulently getting government tenders and inflating the prices – looms large in Kenya. In addition, there are a high number of "frustrated, educated young people in the country" who, despite being more educated than their parents, are jobless.

Anger over this lack of job opportunities has been one of the "major driving forces" behind the recent disorder in Kenya, said The Sunday Times. The final straw was the government's plans to introduce more taxes – including levies on mobile money transfers and digital products that would have directly affected young people's online activities – to tackle the country’s crippling debts.

This is, however, "not an isolated upheaval", added the paper. "Much of Africa faces a major jobs crisis" driven by what Ladi Balogun, chief executive of Nigeria's First City Monument Bank Group, has called a demographic "ticking time bomb" on the continent.

With 40% of Africa's population under 15 – compared to just 19% in Europe – research suggests that the continent needs to create 18 to 30 million jobs annually through to 2030 to meet this growing demand. At the moment, it is generating only 3 million a year.

Another key factor driving disillusionment among Africa's youth is debt, said the United States Institute of Peace. Kenya is at high risk of debt distress, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and more than a third of its revenues go towards debt interest payments. The recent Finance Bill, which was dropped by President William Ruto on Wednesday following weeks of protests, was supposed to increase government revenue through taxes, satisfying a condition of the IMF loan.

Like many other developing countries, Kenya finds dealing with its debt burden is a vicious cycle that is hard to square, especially when so many young people see an "economic and financial system stacked against them", said Vox. If Kenya doesn't pay it, "the possibility of borrowing in the future will become more difficult in the short term; over time, it could mean more unemployment, more poverty, and overall worse outcomes for Kenyans".

What next?

With close to 30 people dead and the government severely weakened, the youth-led movement in Kenya, which has "little precedence in a country where protests are traditionally elite-led", finds itself at a "crossroads", said The Guardian.

How the "diffuse and leaderless movement", which largely organised via social media, pursues its objectives remains an "open question – and a source of internal debate", said Al Jazeera.

But with Africa set to account for a third of the world's under-25s by 2035 with a median age of just 19, the conditions for further youth-led unrest are only growing.

For many "the answer lies in private-sector growth" said The Sunday Times. This is the "key" to ensuring Africa's demographic surge becomes a "powerful tool for economic and social change and helps this continent boom as others face declining birth rates.

"The challenges we face are formidable. At the same time, the opportunities to be seized are bountiful," the president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, told its annual meeting in March.

The alternative could see what The Economist called the "whiff of revolution" in Kenya explode into an continent-wide call for political and economic structures that prioritise the young.