Youth

With few or no opportunities to emerge as candidates for elective offices—because they are too young or because they have limited experience—some young Africans are now actively campaigning for a reduction in the age limit for running for public office.

Africa Renewal: You have just come back from a mission to five countries in Africa. How was it?

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.

Currently a senior financial economist at the Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Ms. Yinusa also runs the GENN Initiative (Girls Education in Northern Nigeria) foundation, which pays for young girls to go to school.

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.

Ms. Ezekwesili and others decided to take to social media to demand action from the government. They emphasized their point with a march to the national assembly in the capital, Abuja.

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.

The youth are using their large numbers to vote in younger leaders or leaders they feel will be sympathetic to their plight.

In a tiny sweltering tin-roofed shack tucked inside one of Mogadishu’s bullet-riddled neighbourhoods, two brothers, Ali Hassan and Mustafa Yare, sit hunched over one of eight humming desktop computers. Together they show Nasteexo Cadey, a young veiled student at Mogadishu University, how to set up her Facebook account, browse YouTube videos and check her e-mail.