Down by the bypass where the new roads gleam They raised a data centre out of a minister’s dream Silver pipes, blue lights, guards at the gate Kids still carrying buckets where the taps don’t run straight A billboard said THE FUTURE’S HERE in a borrowed neon tongue But the clinic lost a nurse and the school roof still come undone At dusk the mothers watched the cooling towers glow Like a spaceship landed somewhere it didn’t know Kigali in April, the dancers moved in chrome Coders, ministers, founders talking of a continent of its own Forty-nine signatures on a declaration page While the war kept muttering just beyond the stage Men in clean shirts said the old days were done That the algorithm’s coming like a second sun But in the market the traders laughed low and dry They’ve heard a hundred futures come and pass them by And the machines keep humming through the long hot night Saying faster, faster, everything will be all right But who gets the power and who pays the price Who drinks the dust, who sells the paradise We don’t need a god built out of code and wire We need light in the schoolhouse, water, truth, and fire If the future’s coming, let it answer to us all Or it’s just another empire with a cleaner wall A boy in Lagos heard a voice note on his phone A candidate promising the votes were already sewn In Johannesburg a fake man spoke in a foreign face Promising sanctions, panic, one more crooked race In Ouagadougou they shared those shining clips Strongman in a language that never crossed his lips And somewhere in Libreville a stiff old broadcast frame Turned rumour into gunfire, and nobody knew the name They say the chips will save us, say the models will be wise Say hunger, war and climate bend before electric eyes But I seen landlords smiling where the housing funds were cut And a hospital ward closing while the ministers strut I seen river water thinning for a server farm upstream I seen men dig cobalt for somebody else’s dream I seen the labeler at midnight training somebody’s crown For a wage so thin it disappears before the sun goes down Now a girl in Kisumu with a cracked-screen phone Runs a small model local, built close to home Not grand, not godlike, not sold as destiny Just weather for the farmers and forms for the clinic free A teacher in Mbarara checks lessons in Luganda A co-op maps the floods before they break Rwanda Small lights. Real lights. Under public hands. Not heaven dropping down, but people making plans. And the machines keep humming through the long hot night Saying faster, faster, everything will be all right But who gets the power and who pays the price Who writes the code, who lives the sacrifice We don’t need a throne for every billionaire We need tools that speak the languages people wear If the future’s coming, let it answer to us all Or it’s just another empire with a cleaner wall So slow that train just enough to change the track Keep the promise, leave the fever, don’t go racing blind and black Let the universities build, let the unions have a say Let the villages decide what the wires ought to carry Let the state be more than muscle for a private gold rush game Let the measure of advancement be more than size and fame Because a fast machine in a broken world Only teaches broken men new ways to rule And dawn comes red over the satellite dish Over the mine dump, the ballot box, the unkept wish Over the child who still believes tomorrow can be made Not bought offshore, not forced, not digitally displayed The future ain’t a sermon from a stage of glass and steel It’s whether ordinary people get to shape the things they feel So let the servers sing, but let the people choose the song Or the road to promised cities will be one more road gone wrong
