Our systems in Africa are mostly inherited from our colonizers. Each African country celebrates independence every year, celebrating freedom from the colonizers but we still do things the way they taught us. Our judiciary, community setup, way of dressing, and the education system itself.

We do not want to change the systems because we don’t have our own, the power to create our own or we just think that it is the best system? Don’t we have the brainpower to come up with something peculiar to us, something that screams Africa in it?

Africa has the largest number of youths in the whole world and yet our young people are given little or no chance to dream new dreams and take their countries forward. The ones that make it to school or in any system, are taught to abide by the old rules, expired ones, and just stick to the system’s old lane.

Some countries are doing their best to make sure that they come up with something unique and stay proud of their cultures. Countries like Namibia, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa…… still have that element of culture and are trying to build along those lines. It’s not perfect of course, but at least we can see the Africanness in some aspects of their lives.

For most countries, we are still where the colonizers left us. Zimbabwe, for instance, still has some roads, buildings, houses that the British left. People are still using these infrastructures up to date and not even maintaining them or building more new ones.

This doesn’t mean we do not have something connecting us to our roots, we have, but mostly we operate under the colonizer’s systems. And yet we still have people going to school to study architecture and all, but our country’s development in terms of infrastructure is just stagnant.

Africa has the largest number of youths in the whole world and yet our young people are given little or no chance to dream new dreams and take their countries forward. The ones that make it to school or in any system, are taught to abide by the old rules, expired ones, and just stick to the system’s old lane. Look at how lawyers and judges still wear white wigs.

Some who are creative, are either met with criticism and mostly no support. We can see this even in our African politics. In Uganda, Bobi Wine went through all that simply because he is a youth with a new dream. The youths that get fully supported and get to eat from the fat pockets are those who seem not to question authorities and just go with them, pleasing their egos.

It’s time to wake up as Africa, as youths because we are no longer tomorrow’s leaders, tomorrow has arrived. Let’s keep up with the creativity. Let’s keep pushing the boundaries, the old walls, till we get space to create new ones. We will successfully leave our footprint on this earth, we just need a clean space to step on.