Yes, it weighs heavily on the corporate heart, but prospective employers, do not be deceived: African Millennials and their Generation Z counterparts will leave your company the minute they are even slightly inconvenienced.

Their journey thereafter often leads to the swankiest new bar in town, where they chatter through the night with a friend or two – those undoubtedly employed by the auditing firm across the street. Their conversations revolve around their collective ambitions: sitting on a board by age 29, making partner by 30, securing the latest Mercedes, and finally booking the dream trip to Lake Como. 

To these budding intellectual minds, a summer cruise on the Italian peninsula sounds apt. To consistently work for the said finer things, not so much. It is not sensible, it cannot be grasped; especially not when the office air conditioning isn’t to their liking, the manager’s ‘vibe’ fails to ‘match’ theirs, and the catering staff’s choice of coffee is ‘just not giving’. 

As we discuss conducive environments, it is important to note that, according to The World Economic Forum, Africa’s business landscape has undergone rapid change since the early 2000s, driven by increased regional mobility, urbanization and population growth. We’re seeing a great  demand for Afri-manufactured products and services now more than ever (African Trade Report, 2022). Thus, the continent’s corporate workforce is growing to adjust to these demands. It’s an economist’s dream. 

 Despite this, 21st- century African employers face a unique challenge: their young employees are more shielded and have more opportunities than ever, yet many carry a sense of diminished self-drive, discouraged by work environments that do not meet their personal standards – or the idealized workplaces they see on social media.  

Now, let us not confuse these realities with the notion of a toxic workplace, for it does exist. Distinctly, in The Problem with Work, an unamused Kathi Weeks scrutinized the reality of today’s employment under neoliberalism, speaking of it as caring only for ‘the growth of numbers by insecure, oppressive, and unrewarding conditions heralding a return to earlier epochs of hyper-exploitation’. 

In colonial Africa, Ms. Weeks might have been right. Today? – picture Africa’s economic landscape. What do you see? Is it drought-struck arid land or Tanzania’s Off Grid Electric and Kenya’s M-KOPA solutions that are quite ‘lighting up’ Eastern Africa through solar energy? Look a little closer still, is it an impoverished indigenous tribe or the publications of consensus that Africa’s agribusiness sector is expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2023? (Growing Africa, World Bank Report). 

Undoubtedly, Africa is on the rise. But why do many young professionals seem to overlook the fact that, much like previous generations, they too must embrace the hard work necessary to build a great nation? For it is this very action that resuscitates a dwindling economy. 

On application of this dialectical reasoning, young employees that consider themselves victims of workplace drudgery, happen also to be the very ones that have enlarged desires to amass miles of wealth. Not simply to have their grin plastered on the ‘employee of the month’ board, but to accumulate enough for themselves and their generations to come. Indeed, there is no crime in six figures and no error in opulence. There is a saying in corporate America: ‘if you don’t come in to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming back on Sunday’. Notwithstanding the humorous inflection, there is much to learn from the adage. It is vital that hopeful African youth understand the need for a little bit of stoicism. The office’s subpar feng shui cannot be one’s last straw. 

I am reminded of a dinner table conversation: mother puts down her fork, and with the wisdom of a wealth manager and a hundred men on Wall Street, poignantly notes that: ‘no one has ever passed down employment to their children’. That being said, if all corporate workers are honest with themselves, they all believe the same thing. They believed it when filling out their application to work forms, and they continue to believe it when sitting behind their office desks – that they are candidates for prosperity. Rightly put by Frances Trollope: ‘any man’s son may become the equal of another man’s son’. Thus, when these two ideas marry each other – that is, the burning desire to increase one’s financial capability and the reality of there being an even playing field to do so – the path becomes obvious. 

 Yet, on the path to success, few talk about the toll that office small talk, cold sandwiches, and a clock that never seems to tick can take on the psyche of newly employed African Generation Z-ers and their Millennial predecessors. One might even expect the Millenials, with more years in the corporate world, to have developed greater resilience by now. 

See, this inability to deal with an unbefitting employment environment outside of their control then becomes a gigantic hurdle to actualizing the reality of learning from those who came before, paying one’s dues and sitting at the feet of the master long enough to garner emotional pliability, a thing crucial to the capital formation and wealth creation so pined after. 

Indeed, the muscles are weak. Morning pleasantries with the manager are tolerated and Lucy from HR is simply unbearable; from her perfume to the third compliance awareness sent in this week. The sentiment in the air is thick. So much so that online humor satirizes the unbearable reality of office rapport. The African corporate is likely to experience a daily exchange that goes a little something like this:

‘Morning!’

‘Morning!’

‘Had a good night?’

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Yeah, you?’

‘Yeah.’

It is repetitive, it is nonchalant, it does not vary in tone and yes, it will repeat itself tomorrow. Despite its arduous nature, youth of Africa, this is not a cause for concern. We would do well to remember that hidden in this day-in-day-out monotony (one that is a far cry from the blacksmith’s toil during Britain’s Great Depression or the hand-labour in the cotton fields for the enslaved African American) is a vital tool so desperately needed for the accumulation of long-lasting family fortunes. It is the ability to simply stay. 

More often than not, when we are hungry, we simply want food, not to be taught how to fish. Africa’s youth want rands, shillings, pulas, and kwachas but not much to do with the chastening of oneself long enough to learn of the resilient nature that becomes the bedrock of amassing capital, even in unfavorable conditions that do not match up to one’s shielded upbringing. 

Thus, it is paramount that one works faithfully, ignoring the outdated couch at the reception and the accompanying grim receptionist who never smiles, staying the course long enough to be a monetary benefit to one’s employer, whilst garnering enough skill from that which is already established to pour into one’s own inventions of tomorrow. Indeed, one cannot lead without being led. 

Nigeria’s Charles Igwe (Nollywood Global Media Group CEO) put it aptly: ‘getting things done is better than having things perfect. Whatever you have in your hands, get going with it. Just do it.’ Let us pluck a leaf from that. Let us allow ourselves to understand the unremitting power of patience, in bearing with corporate environments and the people within them that might not be one’s cup of tea.  

Now, we are not excusing anyone who hopes to employ another for failing to be cognizant of the needs of the young employees of the day, but it would be severely regrettable if Africa’s youth cannot muster enough tolerance to overcome the vicissitudes of the repetitive ‘Good morning, Jill!’, ‘Good morning, Tracy’ office causerie. It is a small price to pay to build Africa, while still managing to acquire enough to secure one’s showroom Benz. 

In his work The Psychology of Money, author Morgan Housel states: ‘Warren Buffet’s greatest skill is investing – but his secret is time.’ This is the message of the day. A solemn one, but an honest one. Six months will fly by and so will a year, for it is in the nature of time to do so. 

Subsequently, dear youth of Africa, well-educated and urbanized, do not fear small talk. Do not be frightened by sitting behind a walled desk that is not the vision of an office space from Suits, one that does not carry the aesthetic lighting you imagined. If you desire to play in the big leagues, if you desire to create enough internal resilience to translate into value addition for the company that employed you, if you desire to soon branch out and develop something of your own that makes enough to feed generations with pap and caviar, I say, do not be afraid. 

—

millennials. term used to describe a person born between 1981 and 1996

generation Z. generation z was born between 1997 and 2012

feng shui. in Chinese geomancy, Feng Shui revolves around the concept of arranging one’s surroundings to harness positive energy

suits. is a legal drama that follows a talented college dropout named Mike Ross, who lands a job as an associate at a prestigious law firm in New York City