[Quipunotch104]

Is there such a thing as an "African millennial"? Are there Gen-Xers in Africa? Was there a baby boom to produce Baby Boomers? Aren't these generational terms relevant to the USA only? NYTimes recently covered the distinctions between Millennials and Gen-Xers, and none of those cultural touchpoints or characteristics of Millennials seem to be appropriate for describing any generation in Ghana.

[IkmoIkmo]

Millennials are typically defined as an age-cohort. So yes, you could apply that term to denote a certain generation of Africans, no problem. It may not be useful or confusing, but there's technically nothing wrong with it.

One of the key traits (stereo)typically discussed in the media w.r.t. millennials is a sense of entitlement, growing up with technology. And to a lesser extent, millennials tend to be more understanding of the importance of the environment and diet.

That happens to reflect exactly the article's premise: agriculture is seen as something that poor, illiterate rural people do. Whereas millennials in Africa are urbanising, have mobile phones, are literate and went to school and are looking for a manufacturing or services job, not an agricultural one. The concept of the millennial translates just fine to the African context, in the case of this article.

The average age in Africa is 24, yet the average farmer is 60. That's where millennials come in, reshaping the idea of farming, and giving it a modern touch. That's what the article is about.

> Aren't these generational terms relevant to the USA only?

I mean, even if you disagreed that an African millennial made sense as a concept... there's hundreds of millions of people living in countries with very similar concepts. (e.g. much of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan etc). It's not a term exclusive to the US.

[mcv]

There are absolutely differences between different cultures, so an American millennial or Gen-Xer might be totally different from a European one, and countries that weren't involved in WW2 probably didn't experience the baby boom at the end of the war, but at the same time, thanks to the internet, culture is getting more global, and if there's any generation that's likely to be a global generation, it's the millennials.

[simonask]

So it is absolutely and obviously not true that generational terms like 'millenial' and 'Gen-X' only apply to the USA, because the same characteristics apply (and are used) in all of Europe, most of Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and so on.

Africa is a very big place, though, in varying stages of development. Several places have burgeoning middle classes, with access to similar amounts of consumer goods as the rest of the world. Is there any reason to think that these middle classes don't face similar generational shifts?