Young people want election manifestos that reflect new world policies

A manifesto is a declaration of policy intentions that determines the policy environment for the next five to 10 years. This means that if data privacy is your avant-garde policy issue and your preferred leader has not factored it in their manifesto, chances are high that it won’t be a priority during their tenure.

As Kenyan electorate decides who they will vote for, they should apply rationale to their most pressing issues. Leaders from the old world fail to recognise that there is a new world order fuelled by surveillance capitalism and everything globalisation.

The nuances and technicalities of the new world can be intimidating to leaders with old tricks and conventional solutions.

What Kenya needs is a global leader and not a leader limited to a panoramic domestic view. To be a global leader is to have an affinity for innovation toward global policy issues.

A leader who understands climate change starts with building a futuristic infrastructure that is tied to clean energy and that foreign direct investment can be a Trojan horse to local enterprises as it can be beneficial in the short term.

Generation Z and Millennials only know the new world. To them, conventional solutions to solving healthcare issues, public planning inconsistencies, economic affairs and global climate change are no longer sufficient.

Favourable policies on digital advertising taxes and a progressive education policy that is practical to the new world jobs like content creation, artificial intelligence, startup management and financing are at the top of their policy issues.

“I have years of experience” is no longer a dignified reason to be a leader. The skill to think innovatively and apply innovation is. Young people will transcend towards a manifesto that is passionate and futuristic.

The Jubilee government has set laudable precedence in digitising common public services through a one-stop-shop. It is a revolution of its kind and a new world policy whose focus is efficiency and speed in public service delivery.

Public service is the main vehicle of public policy implementation and for that it digitises governance. The Jubilee government acknowledged that for effective governance, the government has to get ahead of the technology curve.

Kenya adopted a data protection policy for the first time following the influx of mega data corporations.

The long vision is that with a data protection policy, Kenya can now seamlessly get into global economic exchanges where sovereign data is involved.

This is a perfect exemplar of new world policies. Incoming leaders can either match the bar or set the bar higher.

It does make it easier for the electorate to decide the kind of Kenya they want moving forward. Eliminating leaders with barren solutions that are too conventional for the progressive world should be the standard.

It is also important to recognise that as much as we have common grievances like the state of the economy, healthcare facilities, and taxation there are also policy issues that are fundamental to us as individuals like reproductive rights, gender policy and queer rights, among others.

Your leader should at least address one of your most pressing concerns.