DAR ES SALAAM, Jan. 12 -- THE unveiling of Tanzanias Vijana Platform represents more than the launch of a digital interface; it is a statement about how the state understands time, youth and the future.

In many ways, it echoes the warning issued by the poet John Donne four centuries ago: “No man is an island.”

For decades, youth policy across much of the developing world has treated young people as isolated units, recipients of sporadic training schemes or short-lived credit lines.

Tanzanias move suggests a different philosophy: That youth development must be systemic, connected and embedded within the machinery of the state itself.

Demography has often been described as destiny, a phrase attributed to the 19th-century phi...