Africa may be home to the youngest population on earth, but its leaders are among the oldest; many are in their 80s. Most Africans, and especially young Africans, think their governments are doing a bad job at addressing the needs of youth, but young people struggle to gain access to power because ruling elites remain entrenched for decades. Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari seems woefully out of touch with his young electorate: in 2018 he accused young Nigerians of being lazy and uneducated. Young people are responding. In the Nigerian capital, Abuja, a thriving civic society led by young people encompasses everything from promoting good governance and increased transparency to increasing young voter registration and mentoring the leaders of tomorrow. But cultural norms and systemic barriers make it difficult for young people to be elected and monetisation of elections is a further issue: the cost of nomination forms for office is high and vote buying is endemic. The upcoming 2023 elections are likely to be a key moment for young people in Nigeria, when it will become visible if the impetus of recent social movements can be translated into an electoral force.

Africa may be home to the youngest population on earth, but its leaders are among the oldest; many are in their 80s. Most Africans, and especially young Africans, think their governments are doing a bad job at addressing the needs of youth, but young people struggle to gain access to power because ruling elites remain entrenched for decades. Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari seems woefully out of touch with his young electorate: in 2018 he accused young Nigerians of being lazy and uneducated. Young people are responding. In the Nigerian capital, Abuja, a thriving civic society led by young people encompasses everything from promoting good governance and increased transparency to increasing young voter registration and mentoring the leaders of tomorrow. But cultural norms and systemic barriers make it difficult for young people to be elected and monetisation of elections is a further issue: the cost of nomination forms for office is high and vote buying is endemic. The upcoming 2023 elections are likely to be a key moment for young people in Nigeria, when it will become visible if the impetus of recent social movements can be translated into an electoral force.

Chapter 5, “Consulting,” follows public sector planners as they exported their experience around the world. If familiar accounts of 1970s Britain depict a sclerotic economy and polity, this episode attests to an entrepreneurial social democracy; and if conventional readings of these new towns depict them as quintessentially English, this episode reveals the international horizons of British new town planning. The story begins in 1976, when the UN’s Habitat conference recommended that states develop “spatial strategy plans” to manage urban growth, endorsing public sector planning programs that echoed Britain’s new towns. Milton Keynes Development Corporation took the lead in marketing British expertise to states around the world, including Nigeria, Egypt, Thailand, Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago, and Algeria. Although this outreach promised to open markets to British firms, the Conservative government abruptly terminated these efforts in 1982. Henceforth, British urban planners continued to market their expertise as a model for the world, but in terms that now embraced the priorities of market liberalism.