Why is presence the leadership Africa rarely makes room for?

I know the language of policy, and the silence that follows when it doesn’t change a thing. I have helped draft strategies, then listened to young people tell me why none of it changes their lives. That space between intention and reality? That is where Africa bleeds.

On days like this, we say the right things. We celebrate potential. But beneath the symbols is a quieter story — a story of tension.

Africa is not one thing. It is a continent of deep contradictions. Economies are growing, but so is hunger. We mine minerals for the world’s future, yet our own clinics go dark. Tech is booming in the cities, while children hide from gunfire in the margins. Hope lives here, yes — but so does the kind of pain that scars our continental psyche. A pain we rarely name, but always carry.

These contradictions are not only structural; they are psychological. The trauma of delayed dignity, of repeated promises, shapes how we lead, how we trust, how we even dream of change. Young people are not fragile. They are exposed. And we are the ones doing the exposing.

Africa is not lacking leaders. It is suffocating in systems that will not let them lead. Our continent does not lack vision. It lacks the courage to make room for it. We need to stop performing change, and start embodying it.