The issues of public policies and aspirational incompatibilities first caught my interest during the Nigerian 2015 election cycle. At the time, trending social media hashtags (mainly on Twitter, now X): #babawhenyougetthere, #babanowthatyouarethere, and, on inauguration day, #changeishere, were used to articulate the aspirations and expectations of youth. I was interested in understanding the diverse aspirations expressed via the various posts and their relationship to policy proposals being made by the presidential candidates and the government of the day. At the time, I analysed 72,000 Tweets (thanks to the NCapture feature on Nvivo) and compared them with policy proposals being put forward by the presidential candidates of the two leading parties – PDP and the APC. That was when I discovered the policy incompatibility conundrum.

To date, it remains a major curiosity of mine to understand it and explore ways in which public policies can help close the gap.

Headline convergence

Unsurprisingly, the aspirations and expectations expressed via social media converged, broadly speaking, with the policy proposals put forward by the candidates and government. People wanted more investments in the material, social and political aspects of life, such as: education, healthcare, infrastructure, jobs and an expansion of the political arena. Further, people indicated expectations of better jobs, clearer pathways of transition from school to work, enabled by better quality education, waged employment opportunities and more systematic support towards entrepreneurship, among others. 

This level of convergence was found in political documents across party lines.

Aspirations-policy divergence

Beyond the above headline level however, there were some divergences. On the one hand, while party manifestos and government policy documents included proposals to build new, big things, for example to establish new universities, the demands on social media were explicitly the opposite. They focused rather on repair and improvements of existing ones. Furthermore, while there was an emphasis on agriculture as a pathway to jobs, comments were vehement in their rejection of on-farm activities where the majority of jobs in agriculture are currently located, thereby posing a discordance in the expectations expressed via these platforms and the policy proposals. While somewhat narrow, these divergences are consequential in that they reflect important differences in worldviews between policy formulators and the expressed desires of commentators on social media.

Incompatibility hypothesis

Following the above, I was privileged to co-author a paper with Helen Gebregiorgis on Eritrean youth migration. While Helen’s interest was media representation of Eritrean migration, I was interested in understanding the role of aspirations. As we reviewed the literature, particularly from qualitative studies of Eritrean migrants and youth within the country, we found a major divergence between youth aspirations and those of the state, especially with regard to economic opportunities. Mass Eritrean youth migration, like those of youth all over the continent who cross the mediterranean and Sahara to try to migrate to Europe, can be seen as a form of protest to these incompatibilities.

Over the last two decades, Africa has witnessed many youth uprisings ranging from the Arab  spring uprising in North Africa to the fallist movement in South Africa, OccupyNigeria and the Y’en a Marre movement in Senegal, among others. Underlying these protests were the lack of alignment between the aspirations of the state and those of the youth. Throughout Africa and the Middle East, these tensions were either simmering or finding expression through social media posts, memes, or protests in the streets. Building on these trends, it is reasonable to hypothesise that a lack of alignment between policy proposals and youth aspirations is a major source of tension. This incompatibility perhaps reflects Afrobarometer’s finding of low trust in leaders in a study covering 38 African countries.

So what exactly is the hypothesis? I speculate that there is a direct relationship between policy proposals, citizens and their satisfaction with their government and its policies. The core of the argument here is that the higher the level of citizens’ participation and representation in the formulation of policies, the more likely they will be satisfied with their government and its policy direction as these policies will be seen to reflect their needs and aspirations – to the degree that their inputs are incorporated.

Relevance for policy

What is the relevance of all this? Part of the argument for paradigms of participation is to promote compatibility between governments’ policies and citizens’ aspirations by creating a point of contact that enables the infusion of citizens’ aspirations into public policies. Consequently, the importance of this exposition is to move towards compatibility through close listening to the aspirations of the youth by creating opportunities for them to be involved in and lead in the design of policies. This could be through employing young professionals to lead youth-focused institutions and/or specific policy processes, public consultations, calls for inputs through memoranda and other channels of information gathering and regular research on youth. 

However, this needs to be done with the intention of really incorporating the voices of youth into the design of policies and implementing the same. Part of this means also thinking of informal channels such as social media, taking into account youths’ responses to new or proposed public policies through robust media monitoring and undertaking deep dive conversations with groups whose voices tend to be missing from policy related conversations – such as young persons with disability, ethnic or religious minorities and hidden youth.

As various policies emerge, governments need to work towards greater compatibility with young citizens for the greater good of the greatest number of citizens. Closing the incompatibility gap needs to be an intentional project for governments and other political actors alike. It should be a long term project.