Take it from me. Post-elec­tion shenani­gans, trib­al con­flict, in­ternecine war­fare, boast­ful­ness, re­gret, gross­ly dis­hon­est promis­es, jock­ey­ing for po­si­tion and favour, and acts of shame­less­ly un­veiled par­ti­san­ship by clever pre­tenders will all even­tu­al­ly end or sub­side con­sid­er­ably.

Get­ting down to busi­ness, as we have learned over the years, is best re­alised soon­er rather than lat­er and such aware­ness has grown, al­beit slow­ly, to be­come a part of our evolv­ing po­lit­i­cal cul­ture.

You see, there have been times when ex­treme ur­gency, fol­low­ing en­croach­ing com­pla­cen­cy, abrupt­ly en­tered the pic­ture to damp­en over­flow­ing, but fleet­ing ex­u­ber­ance.

In 1981, George Cham­bers de­clared the fete over and it was time to get back to work. Five years lat­er, fi­nan­cial strin­gency en­tered the rou­tine lex­i­con of gov­er­nance for­ev­er. Through the years, de­c­la­ra­tions on the state of trea­sury hold­ings have ac­cord­ing­ly be­come a manda­to­ry fea­ture of new­ness.

To­day, ur­gency as­so­ci­at­ed with na­tion­al well-be­ing has of­fered up fis­cal menus as­so­ci­at­ed with over­drafts, bor­row­ings, raids on rainy-day sav­ings, dampers on state and pri­vate spend­ing, and the dread­ful thought that there might be as­sets suit­able for dis­pos­al.

“Fix­ing” de­notes a now fa­mil­iar re­frain of dis­re­pair—in our case chron­ic and sys­temic—and the stuff of joint en­ter­prise. Yep, “all ah we,” sug­gest­ing se­ri­ous chal­lenges against hope. Be­cause I pay close at­ten­tion to our youth, I can tell you that hope is a qual­i­ty in short, as op­posed to abun­dant, sup­ply.

It al­so pro­vides lit­tle com­fort that the em­brace of new so­lu­tions to ad­dress a deficit in con­fi­dence has not been mean­ing­ful­ly pre­scribed. This space has harped on just one area of for­sak­en op­por­tu­ni­ty (and there are many)—the dig­i­tal re­al­i­ty.

Our young peo­ple, as dig­i­tal na­tives, have recog­nised the neg­li­gence. And this is not on­ly about gen­er­a­tive AI, which is es­sen­tial­ly a tool made avail­able by the time­less, space­less char­ac­ter of dig­i­tal spaces, no more than the way ham­mers and screw­drivers are crit­i­cal to ac­tiv­i­ties at a con­struc­tion site.

What is even more im­por­tant is the pro­posed ar­chi­tec­ture and its re­la­tion­ship with lived and nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ments. There are re­al ex­perts in this sort of thing who can ex­tend the metaphor.

That T&T lags be­hind so many, of like de­vel­op­men­tal sta­tus, on this ques­tion, sug­gests that the same ur­gency at­tached to di­ag­noses of poor eco­nom­ic con­di­tions is not be­ing as­signed to key com­po­nents of se­ri­ous so­lu­tions.

We shall see, in due course, whether this point is be­ing un­der­stood. For in­stance, it is built in­to the ques­tion of re­mote work (cur­rent­ly lost in puerile pub­lic dis­course), to­geth­er with con­cerns about things like the “ease of do­ing busi­ness” and the con­duct of rou­tine cit­i­zen trans­ac­tions.

Mind you, there is mes­sag­ing in this not on­ly for state sys­tems but in the way the pri­vate sec­tor al­so does its busi­ness. True, per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence does not the en­tire sto­ry tell, but poll friends and fam­i­ly and col­leagues and lis­ten for your­self.

We have sim­ply not been get­ting this right. And I am con­cerned that there is a lev­el of de­mo­ti­va­tion that’s hap­pen­ing among our young peo­ple born in­to the dig­i­tal age. And they are protest­ing through with­draw­al as they, and the tools they use, are pre­sent­ed as prob­lems and not as so­lu­tions.

“How does it feel to be a prob­lem” WEB Du Bois once mem­o­rably asked.

I have con­tend­ed here be­fore that while the more sea­soned folk ought to be there to pro­vide con­text and mem­o­ry, the dri­ve to achieve “dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion” should be in the hands of the un­der-40s.

There are nu­mer­ous in­di­ca­tors of suc­cess or fail­ure in our five-year tranch­es, but I pro­pose to main­tain vig­i­lance over this one. Yes, there are ur­gent, im­me­di­ate needs that re­quire rather rare, en­light­ened en­gage­ment, but I know that I am not alone in keep­ing an eye on this.

The last time I left this coun­try, I was asked to com­plete a sil­ly lit­tle form with an ad­di­tion­al, for­got­ten field I wrote by hand, in cra­paud foot, at the back. When I re­turned, there was no room on the oth­er form for the full name of my coun­try. I lost yet an­oth­er pen to a fel­low trav­eller, and half the flight for­got to sign the back of the same form for cus­toms.

I once asked an of­fi­cer what even­tu­al­ly hap­pens to these forms. Yes, I’m done here. I gone oui.