I have been thinking about the matter of taste and the Nigerian youth. We are at this point where we are particular about skills acquisition, productivity metrics, and rapid employment pipelines, and rightly so.
And as such, it seems to me countercultural, almost even irresponsible, to argue for the cultivation of taste at this time in our national development. The question would be, "What place does aesthetic discernment or cultural sensitivity have in a nation with youth unemployment nearing crisis levels?"
But, again, maybe this is where the difference will be made. Maybe, this will be our own "Estonian moment." Where, in our bid to leapfrog the "analog", we bake in taste into how we train our youth.
Taste never goes out of fashion. Taste is timeless. Taste could be the gamechanger for how the world perceives us and the work that comes out of this nation.
I will be exploring this idea in subsequent posts.