If you think that you want to change your life, well, obviously I'm not the holder of life-changing transformations. I'm merely here as a fellow Rwandan who has crossed 30 and who is noticing some attitudes among 20-year-olds that if they don't change very soon, very fast, we might not have a very bright future.

I would like us to be ready to be slightly offended and to make any changes that are relevant for you. If not, you have a life. You can close the laptop and continue to live it.

But I just need to understand. And I come to this place with extreme curiosity. I want to understand what is going on with the Rwandan younger generation that somehow hates work.

There's no other way to say it.

Yes, we live in a capitalistic world. Yes, the systems are rigged against us. Yes, this is bad. But then what's going to be next? Are we going to complain forever and not take responsibility for our lives? What is the solution here? Because I'm very curious.

The attitude at the table

I have hired several young people. Every other six months, I'm hiring. I'm always interacting with young people. And I'm fairly young. I'm not old at all. But there is something that I notice.

Number one: the attitude of superiority. I don't know if it's a global thing amongst 20 to 29-year-olds. I don't know if it's generational. I don't know if it's purely Rwandan (I would not be too surprised). But when you come to the interview almost with the attitude that you are doing me a favor with your presence, what favor are you doing me by being here? I don't know if there's someone training you guys to be arrogant, like maybe arrogance is going to give you a chance. But this superiority is wild, for lack of a better word. It's absolutely incredible. You are trying to come to the table with borderline disrespect.

I try to be very gentle when I am interviewing people because, yes, there are nerves. You're nervous. You're in the position of weakness. You're the one who stands to lose more than me. Whether you come to my company or not, I'll be fine. The worst that can happen to me is that I'll stay where I was just before the 45 minutes I met you. So I try to be very compassionate when people are on the other side of the table.

But then that compassion is met with one leg over the other, your back all the way over there, looking down on me, almost wondering. And what about that attitude is telling you that it's going to create a chemical reaction in my brain that will make me hire you or partner with you?

And some, at the end of the day, we need to hire. So some are hired. And then I have to spend the rest of the month almost begging you to come on time.

The discourse online is that you do not dream of labor. The discourse online is that all these things are rigged. So you have really created a world of complaint that is married to a world of very, very, very high standards. You want incredibly beautiful things. You want travel. You want all these benefits. But you kind of want them to fall on you like the rain, and you don't want to put in any kind of work.

So I come to this conversation with curiosity. What is the expectation here? Is it that your dad’s friend or your parents are going to subsidize your life? What is the goal?

The babysitting (Thank God this is no longer relevant for me personally)

I used to find myself babysitting and counseling more than I was working. Because I needed to tell you why this work matters. I needed to tell you why you should do it with excellence. I needed to remind you that excellence is in your favor rather than mine. And sometimes we had people who were like, oh, I just thought it was a joke.

What part of this work is a joke? What is going on?

I think I'm very confused.

If you do not want to work, you will not, unfortunately, build the character you need to build to have the things in life you want to have. Yes, there are outliers in this world that have gotten the biggest windfall of their lives and met some random guy on the street that happened to be a trillionaire and gave them money. Yes, that happens, and we see that on social media all the time. But unfortunately for you, that is not YOU. That is not you. And given the fact that it is not you, what it means is that the only thing you have that can work in your favor is your discipline. Your sense of responsibility. Your sense of wanting more for yourself and going towards what you want.

The fear of embarrassment

The other thing that is killing us as Rwandans, and this is strictly for Rwandans, so if you're not Rwandan and can't relate, you can move forward, is our fear of embarrassment. Fear of shame. Shame is one of the things that steals from us silently. Very silently.

You're so afraid to be seen or perceived as a beginner or as a fumbler, someone who is stumbling about, that you'd rather not even try. You'd rather not even start. You'd rather be poor.

I always tell young people when I have a chance to talk to them: there was a time the only money I was making per month through book sales was like 6,000 Rwandan francs. And I kept believing, but also pushing. And I kept embarrassing myself. Telling people, hey, you know what, I believe in this book thing. I believe that Rwandans need books that are based in our continent. It was embarrassing. Let me tell you something. It was embarrassing when I had to post in the high school groups and university groups that I had this vision. Some people laughed. Some people laughed in my face. Some people laughed behind my back. It didn't matter. I needed to make sure that I kept going. At some point, I had no choice.

And some of you might say, that's because you're coming from a place of privilege, you had a roof over your head. And that's very true. I do accept that I did have a roof. I lived with my mother. Some people don't have the same. We know our history. Not everyone has the same starting point. But I asked. I remember my first office was just me asking. I said, hey, could you please give me any room that you're not using, for me to just have free internet and work? And in exchange, I will do something for you. It was Dolph Banza. He was my first benefactor who gave me an office for free. And he needed voiceover for his documentaries. And I said, you know what, if you like my voice, I will learn how to do voiceovers. I watched several YouTube videos, failed a lot, learned a lot. And that was my exchange.

We all have something to exchange. But we also have such huge pride, and such fear, visceral fear of rejection, that we won't try beyond our pride. Our pride and fear of shame and fear of embarrassment are the single greatest thing that is blocking us from our potential. We don't want to be seen embarrassing ourselves. We don't want to be seen looking like beginners. We either want to be plopped up to the top or just… nothing.

Especially Rwandans

I know Rwandans. We are naturally, or culturally, rude. We think that being rude is being dignified. This is very wrong, but that's a Substack for another day. We do have that. We have an attitude where we cannot show people that we admire them. We hate being seen as the weak one. Even if we're weak as hell, we will try our best and our damnedest to not come across as the weak one. That's our thing. I'm not saying I respect it. I'm saying it exists.

Now, with that mixture, we have a generation navigating a changing and competitive job market. And we also have a generation that is going through severe unwillingness to put in the work. I say this because I talk to a lot of people who are trying to hire, trying to have interns, trying to meet people who are hardworking, who want to put in the work. And most people are saying the same complaints. This generation doesn't necessarily want to put in the work.

And I come to this place with as much gentleness as possible because I remember when we were the younger generation. The older generation at the time was telling us the exact same thing. That we don't want to put in the work. So that could also be strictly perspective.

But you show up today, you don't show up tomorrow. You're not consistent. You don't stay in a thing long enough for it to even have the tiniest roots. And you are driven by trends more than you are driven by a sense of vision for yourself.

The cycle

You say, oh, Gen Z wants to be part of a generation and a mission that is aligned. You really love alignment. You really love to work for mission-based organizations. So we have to pitch you and tell you how we are so good for you. But if you want to work with a mission-based organization, go into an organization, create that mission, tell them what they're doing wrong, and work towards fixing it.

One of the best things about Rwanda is that most of the companies here are being run by people who are still fairly young. Between 35 and 50, which is my definition of young. And one thing about fairly young people is that they want to listen. But if you're not speaking, and if you're not speaking consistently, if you're not showing up consistently, how will we become the mission-driven organization that you feel aligned to? Should we just kind of read your mind? What is the goal? What are we thinking?

And then the result after all of that is you feel even more disappointed in the world that you're a part of. And it just creates this crazy cycle of depression and sadness and dissatisfaction. And that feeds into the lack of discipline because you don't have the energy to show up. And you might use coping mechanisms that work for you, or that don't, that harm you. And then the cycle continues.

Are you guys talking about these cycles that you're creating?

The speed of life

I understand that there's a lot of trauma in our country. I understand that you're part of a generation that has information overload.

When I was growing up, we had a photographer that would knock every week on different doors and take pictures of us, and we would see those pictures after two weeks. There was this delayed gratification that we were used to. I remember when I was in high school, I would write letters to my sister who was in another province, and it would take about a week or two for her letter to come back to me. It was just this kind of communication that was back and forth. If I was lucky and I had 200 francs, we had these handheld phones called Tuvugani, where I would talk to my sister for a couple of minutes, maximum five. It was just the basics. How are you? Are you okay? Is mom okay? Anything new? And the rest would go into the letters that I would receive maybe twice a month.

I understand that the speed of life is a lot faster than it was for us. I mean, I'm sounding like a dinosaur, but the speed of life is a lot faster. You have AI now. Most people are being born with phones in their hands. Internet is not even a privilege for most, it's just the normal thing to have. Whereas for us, all the way to about 18, 19 years old, we would go to these cyber cafes, pay our 500 francs and have one hour to do whatever work we needed to do on public computers. I don't know if any of you guys remember the cyber cafes. And then we would go home. You had to really know what you were going to use that opportunity for.

So there are differences in this world, and I'm not going to speak as if I know the deep challenges that you're facing.

But one thing I'm noticing is there's just this rejection of life. Of work. Of accomplishing things. There's a slight rejection of drive. Or is it that you guys are giving up on life? I don't know what's going on.

What are we doing?

I appreciate our president's generation because, obviously, everybody that came after them had it slightly easier. And I'm saying the people who had to fight the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, everybody who came after that had it slightly easier. They had it the hardest and they fought for whatever we see today. This is something that they held in their minds and they made sure it existed.

What are we doing, the ones who are coming after that? What is our game plan? Where are we going?

I say this with the most respect that I can muster. The people who got to where they got are not even necessarily working hard, whatever. I don't know how to say this. They're not afraid of being rejected. They're not afraid of looking like beginners. Of failing. Of trying again and again. Of asking for help. Of embarrassment. They're not afraid of embarrassment. Embarrassment is part of the game.

There's this fear that we hide behind pride that doesn't help us. It doesn't help us at all. None of us is going to thrive if we leave a generation behind us that doesn't want to participate. Everyone hopes that the generation after them is smarter than them. And that's how civilizations stick around for long.

You are very, very eloquent at complaining. Oh my God, if someone gave you a topic to complain about, I don't know if it's the debate clubs that started in high school, I don't know what did this, but if we're complaining, we're there. We are there. But if we're working, and if we're working consistently, we're not there.

And the quality of your life will only be as good as the quality of your conversations and the quality of your questions.

So my question is just, what is it? Is it a conversation about what we should do? Is it a conversation to help you guys? Or is it a conversation that you're already having amongst yourselves, figuring it out, and coming up with something?

I am very, very curious. But I really hope that these are conversations that you're having out loud. Because we're all noticing.

And look, at the end of the day, it's your life. I'm just a big sister here who's coming and asking you: what is the big game plan? What are we cooking if we keep doing this?

The author, Dominique Alonga, is a Rwandan entrepreneur.