Spotlight project wave 1: Fame, Fortume, Freedom

Many youths aspire to be influencers or engage in self-employment, viewing platforms like TikTok and YouTube as viable career paths. Politicians still hold significant popularity, but content creators, musicians, storytellers, and comedians are gaining influence, especially among the younger demographic. They could present a formidable democratic force in coming years given that they occupy almost similar share of mind amongst urbanized Gen-Z audiences. Further to the above, the uprising in Kenya and other parts of the continent shows us that there could be a rewiring of societal expectations of leadership. Newer forms of political leadership and aspiration are maturing across the continent, they come from different platforms to those of old and will likely bring about different tensions, engagement and ideas to the public sphere. There is a noticeable disengagement among the youth from traditional institutions like universities, religion and voting, indicating a need to explore this trend further. There’s a strong interest in the story of Gen Z as a generation. In total we had over 1.5 million views of our insights about Gen Z across different platforms.