Africa Renewal - Volume 32, Issue 1, 2018

A new wave is sweeping across Africa. Elections on the continent are increasingly yielding younger leadership than ever before. From presidents to ministers and governors, senators to members of parliament, Africa’s young people are demanding a seat at the political table.

When some 276 teenage girls were kidnapped from their boarding school in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014, Oby Ezekwesili, a civil society activist and former World Bank vice president, was disheartened by the lacklustre response of her government and local television stations.

Thanks to a unique fellowship at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) as an Ibrahim Leadership Fellow, Marian Yinusa is making an impact in the lives of school-age girls in her birthplace of northern Nigeria.

Jayathma Wickramanayake, 27, from Sri Lanka, is the new UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. Her role is to expand the UN’s youth engagement and advocacy efforts. She also serves as an adviser to the Secretary-General. Shortly after her extensive tour of the Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa in February, she sat down with Africa Renewal’s Zipporah Musau to discuss her mission. Excerpts.

It is a cold evening in Antwerp, Belgium’s second-largest city, famous for diamonds, beer, art and high-end fashion. Inside a small restaurant, a mix of the latest American pop and rap—clearly enjoyed by diners—is playing on a radio.

My name is Raphael Obonyo from Kenya. I grew up in Korogocho, the third-largest slum in the capital, Nairobi, where people live in grinding poverty.

Phumzile Van Damme, one of the youngest members of parliament in South Africa, is also the shadow minister for communications.

I was born in 1990, a year after the Liberian civil war began, and was only 13 years old when the war ended in 2003. My mother told me that at the time of my birth, she could not afford even a blanket to wrap the new baby. A midwife was kind enough to assist with a cloth. Those were trying times for my family.

Most young people would hesitate before leaving a stable job for an entrepreneurial venture. But not for a plucky 34-year-old Ugandan, Eric Kaduru, who made a decision to leave his advertising job in the capital city, Kampala, to become an agripreneur—an entrepreneur in the agriculture business.

The news wasn’t big enough to excite international media, but it was an exciting development this year in Cameroon when Will&Brothers, a local engineering and consulting company, unveiled the first-ever drone made in Cameroon.

At a recent youth forum at the United Nations headquarters in New York, 24-year-old Gogontlejang Phaladi from Botswana was in the spotlight. The organisers of the event consider her one of the “most innovative young people across the world.”

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and executive director of UN Women, recently began a second term in office. In her first term, she drew attention to women’s issues globally, getting some countries to change gender discrimination laws. In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor, Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka discusses her vision and the hurdles that African women continue to face.

On a bright, sunny day in January this year, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf turned over power to George Weah, a decorated soccer star, following peaceful and successful elections. This marked Liberia’s first democratic transfer of power in more than 70 years.

From 2003 to 2005, retired Lieutenant General Daniel Opande was the force commander of the peacekeepers of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). Tough but diplomatic, the Kenya Defence Forces officer in 2004 got the commanders of Liberia’s warring factions to agree to the disarming of more than 100,000 former combatants. UNMIL also provided security, technical and logistical support for the electoral process that culminated in peaceful democratic elections in 2005. As the mission finally winds down operations in March 2018, Africa Renewal’s Zipporah Musau and Kingsley Ighobor interviewed Lieutenant General Opande on his experience leading a multinational force during a most challenging period in Liberia. These are excerpts.

Not long ago, images of child soldiers and the nation of Liberia were wedded in the minds of the international community. The country was struggling to end a horrific civil war, but military efforts were going nowhere.

Interest in cryptocurrency, a form of digital currency, is growing steadily in Africa. Some economists say it is a disruptive innovation that will blossom on the continent.

With United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as a guest at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in his first month in office in January 2017, and then again this January past, the UN is signaling a new era of partnership with the regional body and with the continent.

Mohammed Allie’s wife has given up showers while Cape Town, South Africa’s second-largest city after Johannesburg, contemplates life without a drop of water in its taps. Allie, a BBC correspondent, related his wife’s experience with the shrinking supply of water, caused by an historic three-year drought.

Recent reports that Cape Town, a popular tourist destination in South Africa, will soon run out of water due to a prolonged drought hardly seem to be slowing down the country’s burgeoning tourism industry.