Haha, on the African millenial…
- Quite the misunderstood person. So many folks want to confine us to these pre-determined life boxes, that make it easy to define and govern us. I love the continued resistance to this - online and offline.
- The African millenial has realised that the ‘youth are the future’ dream peddled is a lie. Our folks were told the same, and they’re still waiting in line. So for the most part, we shun the concept of delayed gratification, lest we are lost in the abyss of hopes and dreams, as we hack life and survive by taking on jobs we don’t like, for instance.
- These aspects play out online and offline. The online personas we see are such a useful window of insight to the offline realities, hopes, dreams, fears and frustrations we have. (Oops, just betrayed that I, too, am a millenial…hahaha!)
- The African millenial faces undue pressure to ‘entrepreneur’. As someone once said though, ‘we can’t entrepreneur our way out of bad policies’. Not too many of us have assigned some mental space to assessing the policies governing our political, social, economic and even technological realities. This is something I’m trying very hard to challenge, because we are well suited to inform policy, challenge it, and reform it!
I could go on and on, but I see a backlog of great questions to get to! Hope that suffices, and thanks for the fab questions! Can circle back for follow up!)
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2.On connecting the next billion people, right you are, re: zero rating. In fact, some specific research into the impact of zero rating into connecting folks found that it’s not the primary, nor preferred option to get online (esp for first time users). Read more about the interesting findings by the Alliance for Affordable Internet (a Web Foundation initiative) here: http://a4ai.org/is-zero-rating-really-bringing-people-online/
How to connect the next billion? For one, acknowledge that market solutions alone will not get us to the target for universal access by 2020 that our govts endorsed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - target 9c.
Make the internet affordable by,
- redefining broadband affordability!
check out the ‘1 for 2’ target that A4AI has been advocating http://a4ai.org/1for2-affordability-target/
FYI, the Govt of Nigeria has endorsed this target! http://a4ai.org/nigeria-becomes-first-country-to-endorse-a4ais-1-for-2-affordability-target/
- investing in public WiFi solutions, as well as effectively deploying the Universal Service and Access Funds that many govts are idly sitting on. (Did a thread yesterday on USAFs here: https://twitter.com/ninanjira/status/844505918314303488)
Lower cost of devices (and especially slashing of the luxury taxes imposed on devices in many countries)
More recommendations here: http://a4ai.org/affordability-report/report/2017/#executive_summary
Quite a number of references there, so will stop at that for now, and we can circle back? 
That’s a fab set of questions man! Keep em coming! 
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You, sir, are determined to get me in trouble. According to his people, the dabbing challenge was a success, despite our ‘hating’. Case of misadvising? 
Thanks for being super awesome, Nanjira.
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