Africa’s Biggest Problem? Simple:
We are not a truth-seeking people — and why Gen Z is the answer to the greatest renaissance against this nuisance.
I often find myself deeply reflecting on the challenges that plague our continent. For years, I was baffled: how could a people so rich in natural resources, blessed with vibrant human capital, and led by some of the most educated elites consistently rank at the bottom of nearly every index of human development?
It wasn’t until I lived through enough experiences — disappointments, confrontations, realizations — that the answer finally revealed itself, clear and unshakable:
We do not optimize for truth.
We do not uphold objective truth as a cornerstone of our culture. Instead, our social baseline is constantly shifting — governed by age, seniority, and status. We are not merely unequal by resource distribution; we are unequal by cultural design.
I was privileged to have grown up in an environment where all individuals were held to account based on baseline principles we all agreed to be true — where empirical evidence, fact-based conversations, and the rule of law were king. This meant there was an open line of communication to bring about effective growth within the community. Ideas could be interrogated regardless of who held them. It was an environment where evidence and reason stood above rank and hierarchy, where conversations weren’t silenced by age or title but strengthened by mutual respect for logic, law, and shared values.
How often have you heard these phrases?
- “Am I your mate?”
- “Who do you think you are?”
- “What’s your pedigree?”
- “Have you no respect?”
These phrases don’t just reflect casual speech — they reinforce a social contract that places obedience over inquiry, tradition over evidence, deference over truth.
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This culture has consequences.
It doesn’t just stall social progress; it sabotages our science, education, economics, and governance. We raise children to obey rather than to question. Our schools teach compliance, not curiosity. Our public discourse rewards loyalty, not logic.
Much of this, I believe, is a colonial inheritance — systems built for control, not empowerment. Institutions that were designed to maintain order, not encourage innovation. And long after the colonizers left, we maintained the architecture of subjugation, mistaking it for structure.
Well, if this is your lived reality, then you must be a child of the soil.
But all hope is not lost.
I recently watched a clip from Ghana’s parliament where the Speaker, confronted by the minority leader, retorted, “Are you Gen Z?” It was funny, yes — but it was also revealing. It reflected a shift in society and the beginning of the collapse of our historically large power distance index.
Generation Z — often described as cantankerous — has grown up tech-native and exposed to cultures beyond their own. They’ve peered through 5.7-inch windows into worlds that challenge their inherited norms. They’ve seen that the systems their parents revered are often broken, and that many of the ideals held so dearly by generations before them are ill-positioned to serve them — and have, in fact, left them disenfranchised.
They are not content with “that’s how it’s always been.”
They want more.
Think more.
Dream more.
Become more.
Because they’ve seen more.
So, this is a letter to Gen Z:
We are not merely the young people who are powerless.
We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.
The changemakers who make the world dance to Afrobeats and win Grammys doing it.
The Wakandans who take our culture to the world through film and fashion.
The owners of our own narratives on TikTok.
The ones born to question everything.
The truth-seekers who bring governments to a standstill — from Lagos to Nairobi.
The instigators of societal change.
The agents of disruption.
Because we are not merely part of the population — we are the population.
And we are not the future.
We are the now.
