Beyond the social media banter between Ugandan and Kenyan youths

Every so often, social media bursts with episodes of mutual teasing and light-hearted mockery between East African youths from different countries in the region. The episodes have usually involved comparisons of infrastructure, quality of life, leadership, types of foods consumed and pretty much everything else, with one country’s youths taking on another’s to illustrate how they are superior to their neighbor. 

Youths often dig up various kinds of photographic illustrations, glorifying their country, mocking the other country. It is entertaining, harmless chatter. Whenever an episode of it starts, it might go on for an entire day or even two. 

It is commonest between Ugandan and Kenyan youths. I think it has also happened once or twice between Ugandan and Rwandan youths. Every time I see this going on, it strikes me as non-toxic sibling rivalry. It implies that these young fellows, subconsciously, perceive themselves as one. 

As such, by one group reminding another how the latter falls short in anyway, is an unconscious admission that they do not perceive an explanation why they should not be the same.

Of course, strangers do not joke that often between themselves, and nor do they find much commonality to fuel such banter. What fans the continuous chitchat between East African youths is a sense of oneness, undeterred by borders. 

On a more serious note though, and perhaps more indicative of positivity, such social interaction reveals similarity of culture between different groupings of East African people. 

The youths carry largely similar individual behaviors, values and preferences. That is how they regularly locate common grounds against which to prick one another endlessly, and without offense. Their engagements on social media indicate that their individual values and beliefs, such as trust and respect for others, and confidence in individual self-determination have a very wide intersection. 

As such, these youths would be easy to rally for common causes, if these causes appeal to their common interests, which may not be few. 

The similarity of the core of their culture implies that their interests are linked to the same behaviors, values and preferences. Of course this is not surprising, considering the crosscutting cultural aspects of majority of African people, but its unplanned display in social interaction of younger generations gets heart-warming in a way of its own.

The interplay between social interaction, culture and development could take academic form, and will offer richer views. 

However, without taking that finer academic route, we can still be able to tell that the energy of interaction of East African youths, displayed in the above interaction, regardless of what older generations may feel about it, can be tapped for solid regional unity agenda. 

Such youths could be brought together through sports galas, trade fairs, bazaars and social events, riding on the vigor displayed in their social media banter tirades. Of course there are already initiatives bringing East African youths together, but they would be easy to scale up using this line of engagement. 

The youths would need no pushing to buy into these initiatives. Their social media interaction can be easily upgraded to more regular physical interactions, in very frequent events. 

When youths get to interact often, from the different African countries, it will result in higher regional unity prospects and the job of regional integration might turn out easier in many ways. 

Social interaction enforces the creation of informal institutions. Informal institutions normally play a vital role in socio-economic transformation. These informal institutions underlie the basis of economies. They often evolve into professional associations, trade unions, and community structures, which then influence public response to government agenda. They can, to a great extent, determine the outcome of government initiatives. Imagine therefore the impact that we would have, if our youths across East Africa found themselves belonging to the same informal institutions, and started taking interest in East African regional integration agenda through these institutions. The result might be extensive. When citizens, especially the youths across the region converge voluntarily, many barriers to regional integration could fall by themselves. Certainly there would be need to motivate this voluntary convergence, and the social media interaction of our youths indicates that such motivation may be relatively easy to put in place. It already has a frame against which to wrap.

As of today, each East African country may be running significant youth-focused programs. These may be merged to tap into the cross-border energies displayed by our youths, in currently mainly social form. We can then evolve it all into more strategic and productive initiatives. 

Raymond is a Chartered Risk Analyst and risk management consultant

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