Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Welcome to Into Africa. My name is Mvemba Phezo Dizolele. I'm a senior fellow and the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is a podcast where we talk everything Africa, politics, economics, security, and culture. Welcome.
Africa is young, and Africa is female. The median age in Africa is 19 years. To contextualize this, the median age in Germany is 49. So if Germany represents the epitome of what European progress means, that means there is 30 year gap, a 30 year gap between the median age in Europe and the median age in Africa. When you consider countries specifically in Africa, it's quite common to find countries where the median age is 16, sometime even 15. That means that Africa has a lot to offer the world. Germany and its peer countries in Europe are aging and aging will continue. This means that they'll need labor force, they'll need workers, they'll need security, they'll need many things, and all of those things Africa will be able to provide, at least in principle. It also means that Europe need to start looking at Africa differently.
When I've spoken to European policy makers like those, the European Parliament, I often tell them that they should consider African youth as the constituent and not look at them as a threat. We know that there's a big migration going on in North Africa, young people trying to cross the Mediterranean, a lot of them dying at sea. But we also know that African youth are creative, they're committed. There was a time when people is wondered how come African youth never mobilized? Those days are long gone. Over the last two decades, we've seen youth movement blossom all over the continent.
Y'en a Marre in Senegal, Balai Citoyen in Burkina Faso, LUCHA in DRC, #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe, FeesMustFall, Rhodes Must Fall, and the People's movement in Uganda, all of this movement have been successful at whatever they set out to do, but only in the short term. They often lack staying power to complete the task that they started. And this means that they should review how they mobilize, what it means and how we do that. Joining me to talk about some of the challenges of youth mobilization in Africa today is McDonald Lewanika Accountability Lab Country Director for Zimbabwe and regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa. Welcome to into Africa McDonald Lewanika.
McDonald Lewanika: Thank you so much.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Youth, civic and political engagement is an important part of development in Africa, socioeconomic and political. What is the state of youth engagement from where you stand?
McDonald Lewanika: So the, the, the state of youth engagement across the continent I think is as vibrant as you have painted. There have been a lot of encouraging signs around the youth's, interest in taking over leadership on some issues that, uh, matter to them, which really is, I think, exciting, but also both, uh, a bit normal given the statistics that you have given out around the demographics where the continent is concerned. So, so there is a vibrant youth sector on the continent. I think that even though the picture is varied, generally the picture is encouraging with civic engagement and youth participation is concerned on the continent.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: There gotta be some challenges. We know Africa is not a monolith. It's a big place. 54 countries, different cultures, different type of government. What will you say are the main obstacles to effective youth mobilization?
McDonald Lewanika: I think you're correct. Africa is indeed not a country, uh, which is why I think when I ended, I ended by saying that the situation is, is is varied. It varies across space, but it also varies across categories of young people themselves. Young people come in different shapes, form and sizes that are informed by their socioeconomic backgrounds. And there is a difference between the, the young person in the high-density suburbs and rural areas of Senegal and the ones that are in Dakar. And the challenges will be different.
But generally the challenges across the continent emanate from a number of things. The first one is that the institutions that we have that are supposed to support participation of young people across the continent are not fit for purpose. When you look at the way that we organize politically and the, the, the difficulties in engaging in our political parties, the space that we create for them to engage on a continent where the median age is 19, as you have stated, we still have situations where young people are accommodated by way of youth wings and quarters.
It basically means that those kinds of institutions are not fit for purpose. We can say that about political parties. We can say that about civic societal organizations and we can say that also about the private sector. So that's one challenge around institutions. The institutions for participation. The second challenge that confronts them is one that is economic in nature and it is related to their personal political economies and survival. Our continent, even though it is very promising, is largely informal. And a lot of young people have not been able to access economic opportunities in the formal economic sectors, and they have to exist in survivalist modes in the informal economy. That takes a lot of time, that takes a lot of effort and often enough that takes them away from civic and political engagement. I would say that those are two major challenges. There are many others across space, but we can engage on those as we go.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: I hear institutional challenges. You said that this institution, for the most part are not built to fit. Do you mean state institutions? Do you mean political parties or do you mean even the private sector to which you refer to? You talked about quota. I know that when government or when politicians are running for the campaign, political party tend to devote a good amount of time to youth issues. We know that more and more we see young people running for office. So when you're talking about quota and not being fit, what do you mean exactly?
McDonald Lewanika: I mean exactly that and, and I, and I don't refer to just a limited set of institutions. I'm talking about societal institutions in general. When you look at the ways that our states are organized, our societies are organized, they were organized at a time when the median age of of society was not 19. You know, it could have been closer to what Germany was perhaps in the '30s. The situation has changed. Our society now needs to cater to a generation of young people. The question is what are we doing to make sure that our institutions designed perhaps over 200 years ago, borrowed from Europe in terms of how we organize our societies is actually fit for purpose today.
So it's not something that we can just say is relegated to political society or political organizations. It is across the board. As Africans, we need to appreciate the fact that our demographics have changed. And if we are to meet the needs of our society today, our institutions across the board also need to change.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: How should the institution change? You talked about participation. You also talked about some of the challenges that the youth face. Economic, that means unemployment, it means banking account. It means be able to feed yourself in countries the way you just described them, which are primarily built around informal economies. That can be a problem. So tell us a little bit about this.
McDonald Lewanika: That's the starting point, right? If we understand that our society is largely informal, then we need to engage in policy and lawmaking that caters to that which is the bulk of the population. And I don't think that our institutions are doing that. When you look at the ways that we budget, when you look at the ways that we develop policies, we are catering to the formal, yet we understand the bulk of our society does not exist in that space. So the exchange that is required at that particular level.
Then the second thing is a basic redesign, if not of institutions, then not list of approaches. We need to, you know, at, at accountability level we believe in, in, in, in the concept of meeting people where they are. And in the concept of constant change and improvement, how are we changing constantly with the aim of improving the ways in which we engage young people.
Gone are the days when political organizing was just about inviting people to meetings and rallies and thinking that they would turn up. Young people, communicate and engage in different ways and we need to challenge ourselves to articulate those ways and build platforms that allow young people to be able to meaningfully engage depending on where you are on the continent. So in Zimbabwe, where I come from, the statistics around youth engagement are worrying. You'll be told that youth are disengaged. They do not participate and they're disinterested in politics.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Is that true?
McDonald Lewanika: That is far from the truth. It is because it is people like you and me who are engaging in the analysis and we want young people to come and participate in the ways that you and I engaged and participated when we are much younger. In order for young people to be as organized as Balai Citoyen and or LUCHA in Mozambique, in DRC or, or encouraging picture that we've been getting from Senegal, we need to understand that young people organize differently, but they are organized.
But if you are bringing old structures and structures to engage them, you're going to fail. And because you don't want to face the reality of your own failure, you blame them and say that they're disengaged, they're disinterested. Yet the tools that you're using are just wrong.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: To hear you speak. You say old people are blaming them for their own failure. Where exactly have the old people failed?
McDonald Lewanika: Well-
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: And uh, how you are meeting the youth where they are.
McDonald Lewanika: Well, I, I think we need to be honest with each other that in terms of thought leadership and driving the conversation around especially civic participation, that this is not a, at, at the levels where it matters where decisions are making, where money is allocated and where responsibility abrogated it is older people who are sitting in those spaces. It is not young people who are making decisions about where Accountability Lab needs to invest the resources that it has for young people's work. It is midway people like McDonald, a 44-year-old making decisions around how to engage a 19-year-old.
There's something wrong with that picture and that needs to change. Young people need to be in the driving seat in terms of determining where we need to make investments, determining the ways in which we engage them, which basically means a radical shift in terms of how we approach structures and accommodation.
In a continent where young people are the majority and women are the majority, is it not disturbing that we continue to have conversations around inclusion? And when we talk about inclusion, we are talking about including young people and women, yet they're the majority.
Should they not be talking about including us who are not so young? So there's an anomaly there and that needs to be rectified. That's a redesign of, uh, institutions approaches and structures.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: So you do not include the majority, you include the minority. In this case, all the people are the one. So how do you then in your case, meet the youth where they are? You've described some of these challenges. So where do you meet them exactly? At what point? How do you intercept them and bring them where they need to be in leadership position?
McDonald Lewanika: Okay. We try to do that in a, in in a variety of ways at Accountability Lab, both in terms of the work that we do, but also even in terms of our governance structure. So I'll give you an example of what we have done, how we have structured leadership, where the lab is concerned in Zimbabwe and even globally. I just met our board, our global board, and I can tell you that invariably that board is young. What we have tried to do is to accept that, you know, we may fail to have a revolution, but we need to start implementing change.
So our boards are structured in ways that are representative of society. At one end you've got people who may be retired and they've got a lot of time to invest in orthodox development processes. At the bottom end, you've got young people who we are trying to target with our work inputting into decision making, driving the policy, governance and politics of the organization. And then you've got a middle layer where you find people like yourself and myself. So just in terms of representation, where age is concerned, there is a balance and at least input from different segments of society in decision making.
Then in terms of our activities portfolio and package, one of the things that we have really pushed out for is the drive for innovation and creativity, but innovation and creativity not as determined by the secretariat of our Accountability Labs on the ground, but as determined and driven by young people themselves. What we have done is we have created buckets of work where we've got storytelling mechanisms like music and music competitions, visual storytelling mechanisms like a film fellowship and created space for young people to come up with their ideas on accountability through an incubator.
So we are not telling them do this, do that. They're coming and saying, I have an idea around how I can be improve accountability at a community level. And the responsibility of the Lab is to support them. It's to resource them. It is to connect them to networks that can allow their ideas to thrive. That's how you allow young people to get into the driving seat of development initiatives and drive progress in ways that make sense to them in terms of that particular element. The music and the film allows us to be able to engage young people both as a constituent, but also to bring them into the conversation on accountability and governance, which again, traditionally has been relegated to people, uh, who are slightly older, people who are slightly professional.
They may be in the legal profession, they may be political scientists or development experts, but creatives have a place in that conversation and often enough they know how to tell these stories better than we can in ways that ordinary people who are predominantly young on the continent understand.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Do you have examples that stand out in your engagement with youth that you think our listeners should know about and how is this plan out exactly?
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah, so many examples. I think you can go on the accountability lab website and click on any country team. You'll be able to access music products that we have used, albums that we have launched across time in Nigeria, in Zimbabwe and Liberia and things like that. You'll be able to access films as well. And I'm pointing these out because these are the careers of the message that we are trying to spread around accountability, but they're also the discussion starters for conversations around accountability. That's an example of how we have been doing that.
We have also had situations and lots, lots of examples of young people making an impact using these vehicles. If you go to Liberia, one of our very first film fellows now owns a film studio, which invariably we go to and encourage civil society to use for the production of film that is meaningful art that communicates a message and stuff. But these examples are many across the board. You can basically pick anyone. You'll be able to find examples of this creativity in action.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: What is the substance or the message in this work, whether it's film or music?
McDonald Lewanika: Okay, so there are two things. There is no one message that you'll find across this music, uh, and this films, but we do have, uh, areas of interest as Accountability Lab. So invariably you find that a lot of the messaging is clustered around four primary areas. The first one is the conversation around inclusion, but inclusion beyond the usual marginalities of young people and women 'cause they're the majority, remember. It is also about disabilities. It is about geographic minorities. It is about racial minorities and indigenous people located usually at the periphery, both physically and also in terms of development discourse.
You'll find products that are related to civic engagement, which is the subject that we started talking about young people encouraging other young people to be engaged, propering solutions or solution oriented messaging around circumventing some of the challenges that we have already talked about in order for young people to be engaged. The third area is the climate justice, which incorporates some elements of the just energy transition, natural resource governance. You'll be able to find content related to that.
The last element is a broad one around digital rights and covenants covers issues of digital authoritarianism and digital democracy and also democracy in general. So we have a special interest in the democratic conversation in the world. We believe that the way that we are pushing narratives around democracy at the moment is wrong and it's very discouraging, especially for young people. If what we are constantly talking about is the failure of democracy to deliver, how do we expect people to get on board with it? So we're trying to change narratives around that particular conversation as well through lifting some of the examples that you have already given around, uh, what young people in Benin, young people in Senegal or young people in DRC uh, and other places have done.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Accountability Lab. Your website, what is it?
McDonald Lewanika: ww.accountabilitylab.org. Very simple.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: That's like a billboard.
McDonald Lewanika: Yes. (laughs).
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: As the youth engage, you mentioned something important. You talked about women and youth. Let's discuss that matrix there. What is happening in that intersection? If the majority in Africa, the majority of the populations are young. I said at the beginning that Africa is young and female. What does that look like and what does that mean practically?
McDonald Lewanika: It means a lot of things. But the first thing that it means is that young people and women must be in the driving seat and they are not on the African continent. We celebrate this median age and the promise that it comes the prospects of the youth bulge for the continent. But the reality is that young people and women are not in the driving seat. You don't have to go very far all across the continent. The continent at political level is led by men in the main, with the exception I think at the moment of Namibia, if I am, if I and maybe one or two other places, but men are in charge and not just men, but old men. Old men.
You know, in South Africa recently there was an election and you know, the contest is invariably between a 72-year-old man and an 81-year-old person who has ruled before and wants to come back. That's a challenge. There is promise however. You talked about Senegal, a relatively young person, uh, is now in power in Mozambique. They have recently had, uh, a generational change in terms of the ruling party for limo, bringing in a 47-year-old. But given the median age that we have stated, we are not Germany. So it's not enough for a 47-year-old, a 40 something year old to be in charge of the state. It means to be a bit lower than that.
I'm not saying it should be 19, but it definitely should be much, much more representative. So that's the first thing that it means put young people and women in charge and in the driving seat.
The second thing that it means is that we need to stop, stop treating these people just as, uh, recipients of benevolence. Be it economically, be it politically, be it social. We need to accept the reality that they are the majority and they are the people that we are governing for.
And if we want governance to work for the people, invariably these are the people that we are that we're basically talking about. The other thing and last thing, and this is important 'cause you highlighted it, the juxtaposition between Africa and Europe. I think that it's an important distinction to make and I think it is said that our young people and women are dying trying to cross the sea in order to go and provide labor for the Europeans and other markets.
It must be clear. One of the things that this means is that Africa is not a labor reservoir, at least not a labor reservoir for the Americas. Not a labor reservoir for North America or the European Union. Otherwise, we are going back to those days when these countries used to come to our continent to collect labor. We must disabuse ourselves of that. We have enough resources and wealth on the continent for our young population to be able to benefit from and work around. So we need to change our mindsets around labor issues, but also, and most importantly around governance because young people are not living just because they want to. They're living because our countries and our continent are misgoverned. If we improve governance, then they have a reason to stay and develop their own continent.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: There's a tension there. Yeah. One is when you look at the dimension of, you said in charge and in the driving seat, how do you put somebody in charge in the driving seat when they lack experience?
McDonald Lewanika: Experience is not everything. Experience is valuable and that is what I used to get jobs. So the job that I'm doing, the mistake that I made was that I have got many years of experience. But experience is not everything because we have already said that times are changing. Your experience from the 1990s and 2000s may not necessarily be suitable for the age of AI and the internet age. So that is the experience that is relevant. Do we have it simply because we are old? Definitely not. There are some things that my 16-year-old son can definitely do better than me at this particular point in time when it comes to engaging with tech, understanding the communication highway that is in existence right now.
When I go and Google page through newspapers to look for information because that is how I have grown up and that is the experience that I have. You've got other ways of accessing information. So experience is important, but let us also understand that it needs to be experienced that is fit for purpose and that is right for the age within which we are living in.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: This fit for purpose. Ultimately the engagement of youth and women, it's the same thing. If it's specifically considered that majority, it's about policy change and policy is not just AI, policy requires thinking, policy require negotiation, policy require courage. Um, I still wanna come back to this. How do you provide that experience to the youth so that they develop those skills? Yes. I mean college degree is good. It's typically the beginning. But also that raises the question you talked a lot about fit for purpose is the education system in a lot of African countries as stands today fit for purpose because that's also a product of colonial imagination. AI is good, but last I checked, the infrastructure may not be there in a lot of places in Africa. So how do we bridge that gap?
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah. So I, I totally agree with you. It is a policy conversation and and that is where it needs to start. It needs to start with changing the rules of engagement on a number of issues and education is primarily amongst them. This analysis and a close look at whether our education system and what we are training and teaching our children today is actually fit not just for purpose, but it's future proof. So we know that we are now living in the digital agent. That is not going to change anytime soon.
So what are we doing to ensure that the education that we are giving our kids today is suitable to meet the demands of that particular age. I'm not making an argument of whether AI is good or bad or whether it is everything. I know that there are definitely challenges there that we need to navigate and deal with. I'm also not saying that experience is not important, but I have tried to make the case that it is not everything and it must not be used as the hammer that is used to knock people down when they're trying to be in spaces where decisions are made.
It's about balancing, right? It's about an intergenerational conversation around the key policy issues and policy centers that need to shift in order for our infrastructure to be fit for purpose. There are some things that you can protect at college. I mean, for me personally, I think that the value of a college education is just an investment in critical thinking that you can be able to deploy in a wide range of situations, especially if you're in the social sciences. But college education is also important when you look at the STEM disciplines because we know that these are the ones that are going to be driving-
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Science technology.
McDonald Lewanika: Y- yeah. That are going to be driving the future. So we need to invest in those also on our continent, not just in education, but also in health. We may have a young population, but it's a young population that can easily die of disease if we're not making the right social investments in terms of ensuring that they are able to access healthcare, that we've got a health provision infrastructure that can be able to meet the needs of today. So I totally agree with you. What needs to change first is the rules of engagement, and then after that we can move towards enforcement of doing the right things that allow us to be able to cater for our society, which as you have already stated, is predominantly young and female.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Rules of engagement. You're referring to now McDonald, I was in Uganda about the time of the elections last time. People's movements with Bobi Wine and so on, the red beret. Bobi Wine did not become president, but a lot of his associate one seat in, uh, municipalities, some in the mayor's office, some took position in other, in other institutions. Somebody who's 25 years now who becomes a city council person, woman, or man will be a 30-year-old somebody in five years. That means they'll have garnered a lot of experience. They will now know if they didn't know before how to draft a budget for a municipality, how to give tax incentives to corporation to come and invest, how to design programs for garbage disposal and so on, including issues of public safety. It seems to me we need to get more youth in those positions. What should be done to create more avenues for youth to do exactly that? Not all of them to become city council persons, but they can get in other spaces and not always being in the streets.
McDonald Lewanika: Mm-hmm. That's a very important question. And I, and I think that sometimes that's the mistake that we make, right? We think that everyone should be president. I mean, there can only be one president. There's only an infinite number of city councilors at any particular point in time. But just two quick reflections in relation to that particular question. I think that it forces us to think about what we are looking for when we are choosing members of parliament, when we're choosing local government officials.
I, I don't believe that we are still living in the age where for those particular positions, we are looking for leaders. You know, there was a time when the leadership question was a big one on the continent, and we were all looking for these messianic individuals who would be able to take our countries forward. I think that we are at a place where we are looking more for representatives. So if you are in local government, it's not because you are the best and most ad adapted to doing that than anyone else in society. But we see ourselves, you and we think that you can be able to represent our interests.
So there is a responsibility entail by that representation that you come back to us, get ideas and represent the constituents that actually elected you. The mistake that a lot of people make is that when they get into these offices, they think that we are electing them to do things for us without consulting us, and, and that they have all of a sudden acquired superior powers and, uh, and knowledge of certain things. That is not the case. The role of these people is to represent the tasks that need technical input around, you know, how to draft a budget. They need to be able to know how to provide oversight, how to read and understand the budget, how the local government infrastructure works, and how the city as a system operates in terms of water, reticulation, refuse collection, waste management and stuff like that. But they're bureaucrats. There's an entire bureaucracy that is the city council to do these things at a technical level. So we're not looking for technical, technical experts in terms of those particular issues. Their primary task is to represent us and to do the will of the people, which means that they must listen and represent their constituents.
But just in terms of the other issue that you mentioned, indeed, one of the things that we fail to appreciate from the get go is that when we're talking about young people, we are talking about a large cohort. I say that the beginning, that young people are different. So the young people with 19 and the young person who is eight, both are young, but they're different. Their needs are different. If you look at the standard global definition, it's actually up to 35. And that's an adult. That is the, their needs are also different in variant.
But we appreciate that being young or being a youth is a transitional phase. It's transitory nature. People come in, people go, and if we begin to understand and embrace that reality, then we might be able to ca- cater better for the different interests of young people depending on where they're located across the age spectrum and across the class spectrum as they, as they move through society.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Youth, you said experience is not always everything. We've also seen youth go to places and get co-opted by the system.
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah, that's a, that's a tough one and I think that that that is very deliberate, which is why at the beginning of the conversation I said that we need to move away from this conversation of including young people in a situation where they're the majority, but it is because only a select few can be included by way of a quota or access to opportunities. That is what creates opportunities for co-option. And we've already painted the economic picture on the continent. It is hard and a lot of them are aching, they're living in the informal sector, which is very precarious and unpredictable. So they are prone to co-option. Part of what needs to take place is a radical process of education for young people to understand their power on account of the realities that you've already placed on the table, there is power in numbers and with those numbers they can be able to drive their agenda and determine processes, but if they've got no full understanding of what that power means, then they're always going to be prone to co-option. They will be prone to instrumentalization by other people with, uh, political and economic interests that do not necessarily cater to the needs of young people.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: That speaks to the need for critical mass. I talked earlier about this youth movement that often successful in the short term, that like staying power to actually impact change. One situation that maybe stands out since the original director for Eastern and Southern Africa is EFF in more in South Africa, South Africa just held its elections several days ago and the fallout is still unfolding. So we'll see, um, what happens there.
But EFF used to be one of this wings, youth wing of one party and then eventually broke off and became its own party. And I think it's still considered a party of youth in the continent. Not notwithstanding the fact that you, you raised that everybody grows, eventually they, they start graduating from youth. Is there room to see more EFF in Africa or that was a unique case?
McDonald Lewanika: Well first I'm, I'm not sure whether it's desirable- (laughs)
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Okay.
McDonald Lewanika: ... to see more EFF on the continent. But it also depends on how you understand it as a phenomenon. I think that on the continent there is place and space for radical movements and then, you know, it it, it has been said before that if you're young and you're not radical, then you're stupid. So we expect young people to be radical and I think that EFF, part of the reason why it is, uh, succeeded in some ways in South Africa is because it represents that that radical flank of political society, that urgent call to action and radical action that a lot of young people can be able to identify with.
Part of the reason why perhaps it has not grown is also because at the end of the day, we must also appreciate the fact that a lot of us in our societies are not as radical or even as polarized as our political organizations want us to appear. Which is why at the beginning of the conversation I talked about us rethinking political institutions and the extent to which they can be able to serve us. But I think that there is room for radical flanks across the continent. I think that they are necessary, whether they can be in the mold of the EFFs or not, I think is another conversation, but definitely there is space for that.
We need that and uh, it is important to push, especially those that are conservative in nature, in whatever direction left or right to be a bit more reasonable and cater more to the interest of the vast majority of the people. That voice is important. It is necessary. It is needed.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: One sector, 'cause you talk, uh, a lot about institutions is law enforcement and security. Security and law enforcement institutions are staffed with youth. Can you talk about the relationship between those institutions and they kind of youth mobilization that you are been talking about this time?
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah, again, we go back to the basic facts. If the majority of people on the continent are young, then it also means that invariably the workforce in some of these places is also going to be young. That is just a basic reality. Part of the challenge with the kinds of institutions that you have placed on the table is that these are not normal institutions. They're not institutions that operate on the basis of democratic discussion of issues and consensus building. They're command structures.
So the question then, who is in command? And invariably you'll find that those who are in command are those who a lot of experience, those who are relatively old and that junior officers invariably will do what they're told because that is the training that they, that they receive. But we have been seeing changes in these institutions across the continent. You know, there was a time when we knew that if a soldier was told to shoot, the soldier would shoot first and ask questions later if at all they ask questions.
The theory is basically that when you're looking at a democracy building the way that the institutions go, that is the way that the transition will go. Whether it's democratic regression, authoritarian entrenchment and stuff like that. A lot of that is dependent on institutions. And the example that I wanted to place on the table is actually the example of Malawi. You remember that at the last elections and unfortunately they've suffered a recent calamity with the loss of their vice president. But you remember the last elections in Malawi were not orthodox. The elections were run and they had to be redone on account of youth action and protests on the streets.
The army and the police were sent into the streets to go and quell this protest and shoot people and they decided not to. That is how that, let's call it mini revolution, was able to be successful. In countries where these security, uh, forces have gone the other way. The transition is basically told Zimbabwe is a good example of that. In 2018 there were elections that were there, election results were delayed. Young people decided to protest, seven of them were killed. They decided to protest again in January, 19 of them were killed. And as a result, there is no progress in that particular country in terms of, uh, moving democratically, which is different from the place where Malawi might be, regardless of whatever challenges they may be having at this particular point in time.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Do you engage boys or men differently from girls and women?
McDonald Lewanika: So you talked about, uh, intersectionality, uh, earlier in this conversation. I think that when we are looking at young people, we need to understand that, you know, young people invariably occupy both sets or multiple ways of describing gender and sex. And I think that sensitivity requires that we have that understanding and that should also determine how we engage them. But that is not just a determination that must be made by McDonald and Mvemba. It's a determination that must be made by the young people. And part of the process is asking them, so how can we be able to engage you in ways that make you feel safe, make you more productive, and achieve the kinds of things that you want?
Often enough they'll tell you how and that will introduce a variation across gender but also a variation even across class and other interests, which is very, very deliberate and, and intentional. But yeah, our approach is generally graduated. We don't believe in one size fits all solutions. Sometimes it is possible, but most of the times you need to be very deliberate and intentional around how you engage different constituents on account of the different realities that they exist in.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Policymakers who may be listening to you will wonder, okay, this is all good. How do I do things differently? What recommendations is McDonald putting on the table that we should then implement?
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah. So, (laughs), I'm not sure if McDonald is the right person to be putting anything on the table.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: I was wondering about that.
McDonald Lewanika: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, so, so what I will do instead is to direct them. If they are policy makers who are listening and would like to understand that what they need to do differently, I'm going to direct them to a resource. So we have a Lab in South Africa, Accountability Lab, South Africa. They carried out an amazing campaign during the course of last year called What's on the Menu Mzansi. This is a menu of what young people want across a variety of issues. It talks about how they want to be engaged and represented. It talks about their aspirations where democratic governance is concerned. It talks about what they're looking for in terms of local government and stuff. So if there's a policymaker that is listening and is interested in understanding how to act and behave differently, that is a primary resource that I can point them to. If they want to go beyond South Africa, there's something called the Menu of Possibilities that the Youth Democracy Court put together. The Youth Democracy Court is basically a court of young people's organizations, really young, made up of young people sitting together and determining what they need dealt with, where democracy is concerned. It emerged out of the Summit for Democracy process. It is led by a number of, uh, young people's organizations or the African continent with support from the European Partnership for Democracy. So if you go to the EPD website and you look for the Youth Democracy Court or the Summit for Democracy, you'll be able to find these things. So policy makers, if you're not lazy to read this material, is there young people are trying to communicate. You don't have to take it from McDonald or take it from them.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: What is on the Menu Mzansi for South Africa and Youth Democracy Courts, which can be found through EPD.
McDonald Lewanika: Yes.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: McDonald Lewanika, thank you for sharing your perspectives with us today. We appreciate you.
McDonald Lewanika: It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for the time.
Mvemba Phezo Dizolele: Thank you for listening. We want to have more conversations about Africa. Tell your friends. Subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcast. You can also read our analysis and report at csis.org/Africa. So long.
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