9 November/10 November 2019 ★ FTWeekend 5A
s a 12-year-old boy growing
upintheslumsofKampala,
to get money for internet
timeStanleyOllowouldsell
scrap metal or break stones
in the local quarry. “I used to go to the
internet café, I listened to Eminem, I
googled who is this Eminem. The next
day I had information,” he says of his
huntfordigitalstreetcred.
Armed with knowledge — in this case
that the American rapper had recorded
a song with someone called Rihanna —
he felt ready to face his peers. “So, once
they started talking about Eminem, I
had data,” he says, talking at breakneck
speed during a gap in the radio pro-
gramme he now hosts. “That’s how I
kept on progressing. That’s how I
became the cool guy around here who
washustling.”
The day I meet Ollo, in a park in
Kampala, Uganda’s lush green, fume-
enveloped capital, he is dressed in a
silent disco T-shirt with tight
canary yellow trousers. Now
a 19-year-old television and
radio presenter brimming
with self-confidence, these
days he uses the internet for
moreseriousresearch.
Styling himself a youth
motivator and social activist
— he runs a programme
called “Ollo Experience
Uganda” with campaigns
such as the “Ollo Green Teen
Experience” — he scours the
web for the latest informa-
tion on reusable sanitary
pads, entrepreneurship and
climatechange.
“I am too much on the
internet,” he says with a wide
grin, clutching his iPhone 6
Plus. “And I see a lot of
things.”
The median age in Africa, the world’s
most rapidly urbanising continent, is
19.4. That is about half the equivalent in
Europe. The generation born at the turn
of the century has approached adult-
hood in a world transformed by tech-
nology and in a continent that, for all its
deep-rooted problems and daily trage-
dies, is not predominantly the Africa of
wars and famines that has such a hold
onthewesternimagination.
Thesedayscoupsarealmostasrareas
the Nubian giraffe (sadly near extinc-
tion) and you can criss-cross the conti-
nent — immigration officials permitting
— without ever leaving a Chinese road.
MostAfricaneconomiesarenotgrowing
nearlyfastenoughtolifttheirmajorities
out of poverty. But a few have mustered
almost Asian-miracle speeds of eco-
nomiclift-off.
Villages are dotted with solar panels,
meaning most people live within rea-
sonable access of a mobile-charging sta-
tion. Internet access, though expensive,
is increasingly the norm — especially in
cities, where more than four in 10 Afri-
cans live. Smartphones, some assem-
bledinAfrica,aresuddenlyubiquitous.
Connectivity and the sniff of progress
collide with the reality, for many, of
grinding poverty and chronic unem-
ployment. While previous generations
looked back nostalgically to the libera-
tionheroeswhofreedthemfromcoloni-
alism, today’s young people are discon-
tent with their crop of mostly geriatric
leaders. This year, youth and profes-
sionals — particularly women — led a
revolutioninSudan,ousting75-year-old
Omar al-Bashir, who for 30 years had
run a nasty dictatorship held together
by a joyless form of Islam. In Kampala,
where I interviewed three 19-year-olds
for this piece, the politician of choice isstateofmale-femalerelations.
“I don’t want to depend on a man all
my life,” she says, adding that she wants
a proper job — unlike her mother who
used to work as a seamstress but now, in
herphrase,“sitsdownandcooks”.
“I don’t want to depend on a man
because most guys here in Uganda don’t
value their ladies,” she says, sat on one
of the small benches designed for her
kindergarten-sized charges. “Women
are taken as nothing in my country. You
can see a woman struggle. She has four
kids. The man runs away. She puts food
on the table and then he comes back
after five years and wants to take over
thehousehold.
“I want to be independent. I want to
have my money. So, if I want to bleach
my hair,” she says, “I can simply reach
intomyownwallet.”
Nor does she approve of her father’s
havingtwowives,thesecondofwhomis
not much older than Atugonza herself.
“It kind of tortured me mentally. I was
like, why are African guys so polyga-
mous,”shesays,acknowledgingthat
at least her own father always
ensured his children could
attendschool.
When Atugonza finds a reli-
able man — she briefly used
the Afrointroductions dating
app with this in mind — she
would like four or five chil-
dren.Thatisfewerthanherpar-
ents, but still high by international
standards.Insomecities,suchasAddis
Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, women have
o n a v e r a g e f e w e r t h a n
twochildren,butinothersthebirthrate
has confounded demographers by
remaininghigh.
As a result, Africa’s population will
double to more than 2bn by 2050 as
today’s 19-year-olds have families of
theirown.Insomecountries,two-thirds
ofthepopulationisunder25.
Atugonzaisnotblaséabouttheresult-
ing economic challenges. “There are so
many unemployed people. There are
very few industries. Kampala is really
a very small city. It’s a few buildings
surrounded by ghettos,” she says
dismissively. “It’s not going so well. I
thinkit’strying.It’s50-50.”
Yet like many of her generation, she isfar from despair. In much of the conti-
nent, there is an energy andinventive-
ness that shades into optimism. “I’m
filled with hope. The last thing I should
be doing is losing hope right now in my
own country,” she says. “I still hope that
Uganda will reach somewhere techno-
logically, politically, socially. I don’t
knowwhy,butI’moptimistic.”
Janapher Nahalamba, a shy 19-year-
old economics student at Kampala’s
well-respected Makerere University,
also looks on the bright side. “I think we
have more opportunity than our par-
ents,” she says, talking in the student
canteen where she has brought her boy-
friend as chaperone. When she gradu-
ates, she hopes to get a job in a bank, or
perhaps open a cake shop orexport
food from a patch of land her mother
owns on the outskirts of Kampala. She’s
notquitesure.Not long after this interview took
place, the pleasant green Makerere
campuswasraidedbyUganda’smilitary
after students protested about rising
fees.Atleast11werehospitalised.
When I meet her, Nahalamba is wear-
ing a teal-coloured one-piece with pink-
bowed flip-flops and a faux black
leather handbag slung over shoulder.
She contrasts her own prospects with
those of her mother, who works as a
midwife in a government hospital. “She
had a tough background. She had prob-
lems with her fees and she used to have
towalkmilestoschool,”shesays.
Nahalamba’s father died when she
was about 10. Neighbours blamed
witchcraft. “She’s amazing. She’s my
rolemodel,”shesaysofhermother,whois raising five children on her own. “By
God’s grace, she built a house, she pro-
vides everything, all our tuition, school
fees,ourclothing,everything.”
HerotheridolisOprahWinfrey.“She’s
astronglady.Iwanttobelikeher.Iwant
to be a person who is able to put food on
thetableformyfamilyandwhocancon-
tribute to the growth of our nation,” she
saysoftheAmericanbillionaire.
Winfrey’s wealth may be hard to
imagine, but it is easy to observe. Insta-
gram and Facebook have brought once
unimaginable lives just a few bytes of
dataaway.
NahalambausesaTecnosmartphone,
a model made by the Chinese company
Transsion, which pitches to the African
market with special features such as
cameras adapted to darker skin tones.
She uses apps including Boomplay,
Transsion’s music streaming service, as
well as WhatsApp, a continent-wide
methodofcommunication.
Like Atugonza — who proclaims, “Oh
my gosh, I love the Chinese” — Naha-
lamba has a mostly positive view of
China, whose presence is keenly felt in
much of Africa. I once met a teenager in
rural Liberia, a poor west African coun-
try, who stated his life’s ambition as vis-
itingthecountrythathadbuilttheGreat
WallofChina.
“China is developing fast,” says Naha-
lamba. “It is using every small opportu-
nity to make sure it goes higher and
higher.”Askedhowacountrythatonlya
few generations ago was as poor as
Uganda had achieved such success, she
responds without hesitation: “I think
throughhardwork.”Ollo’s success has not come easily
either. He arrived in Kampala as a baby
with his mother after she fled the Lord’s
Resistance Army, a murderous religious
group that was terrorising Uganda’s
north. In Kampala, they lived on the
street. As a child, Ollo and his siblings
collected scrap metal or broke stones
for a pittance. “It was hustle, hustle,
hustle. We had no money. We fed on
birds that we shot with catapults,” he
says, adding that for Christmas they ate
one of the giant storks that roam Kam-
pala’srubbishtips.
His mother had contracted HIV from
her husband, who had already died, but
she struggled to work each day. “She
was so malnourished you could see her
bones,” Ollo says. “You could really
imagineshewasgoingtomorrow.”
Eventually, they ended up in the
Acholi Quarter, what Ollo calls a “deep,
deep slum”. Although conditions were
notoriouslybad,hismother’shealthsta-
bilisedaftershegainedaccesstoantiret-
roviral medicines through a charity. She
got a better job as support staff in an
international school and Ollo started
attending school where he began to
excel, especially in English. “The whole
school could come to assembly just to
listen to me talk,” he says, recalling his
earlyglorydays.“Iwasbrilliant.”
Once when he was giving a
speechaboutUgandanhistoryto
visiting dignitaries, he says, he
was captured on film by a local
TV crew. One thing led to
another. He now presents Youth
Voice on NBS TV and hosts a pro-
gramme on Nxt Radio. He runs a
self-branded motivational pro-
gramme and owns a small store sell-
inghouseholditems.Hehasmovedout
of the slum and helps support his
mother.
Ollo, Atugonza and Nahalamba are
Uganda’s next generation, but they all
pay tribute to the previous one — espe-
cially their mothers. “She was like, you
just do what you want to do. I will hustle
foryouguys,”saysOllo.
On Facebook, where he goes by the
name of MC Ollo, he recently posted a
photograph of his mother attending his
graduation ceremony where he was
awarded a diploma in journalism. He is
wearing a natty purple-checked suit,
graduation gown and mortarboard.
Standing by his side is his mother in a
blue dress with a yellow ribbon around
herwaist.
In the post, Ollo thanks God “for all
my hustles”. To me, he thanks his mum.
“Shesawthefuture,”hesays.David Pilling is the FT’s Africa editorThe teen
continent
The median age in Africa is
just 19 — half that of Europe.
David Pilling talks to teenagers
whose aspirations are being
transformed by technology
no longer the septuagenarian Yoweri
Museveni. Rather, it is Bobi Wine, a 37-
year-old red-beret-wearing, fist-pump-
ing reggae star who is gearing up for a
challengeonthepresidency.
The cities of this new generation are
expanding ever outwards, like water
on blotting paper. Most are chaotic,
thick with building-site dust and thin
on public services. Though they contain
increasing numbers of what manage-
ment consultants call a “consuming
middle class”, in reality many urbanites
scrapeby in slums or on the city periph-
ery. There — fetching water and even
tendinganimals—lifemaynotbesodif-
ferentfromthatinthevillagestheirpar-
entsandgrandparentsleftbehind.Daphine Atugonza, a fashion-
conscious kindergarten teacher from
what she calls a Kampala “ghetto”, is a
caseinpoint.Sheliveswithherfamilyin
a couple of cramped rooms partitioned
with hanging blankets, down a muddy
alleyway strewn with litter. There are
buckets of washing outside and toddlers
scampering around in plastic flip flops.
The house has sporadic electricity but
no running water. “We have to go out
and fetch water in a jerry can,” she says.
Her family shares an outside toilet and
shower with numerous neighbours, a
realitysheacknowledgeswithashrug.
Like many her age, Atugonza is
caught between the receding village life
of older generations and the promise of
a more prosperous urban existence that
has not yet materialised. An amateur
rap singer and one-time Miss Teen with
so-far thwarted ambitions to study
hotel management, her attitudes reflect
this transition. While she thinks it is
appropriatetokneelbeforeherelders—
and even her boyfriend — as a sign of
respect,sheisunhappywiththecurrent‘I’m filled with hope.
The last thing I should
be doing is losing hope
right now in my
country’
From top: Stanley Ollo at
his radio show in
Kampala, Uganda;
Daphine Atugonza, a
kindergarten teacher in
Kampala; Janapher
Nahalamba, an economics
student at Kampala’s
Makerere UniversityPortraits by Martin
Kharumwa for the FTNextGen
NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20197/ - 17:29 User:andrew.higton Page Name:WKD5, Part,Page,Edition:WKD, 5, 1