Youth activism alive in Africa
PASSION FOR CHANGE
advocacy group that promotes young people getting involved in governance. He also convened the Not Too Young To Run movement, which spent years petitioning the Nigerian government to change constitutional constraints on the age limits of those running for office.
Sampson was one of 30 participants on our school’s Emerging African Leaders Programme in 2016, drawn from 10 African countries. Among them was a Ugandan transitional justice coordinator, a South African human rights lawyer, a Kenyan food security activist and a Zimbabwean public health programme director focusing on eliminating malaria.
Despite their geographical and occupational differences, they were all passionate about creating and sustaining meaningful change in their countries and across the continent.
Investing in young leaders creates the kind of legacy I believe Mandela himself would have been delighted by: a living memorial, carried out by young, politically-engaged people pushing the imagination of what our continent can and should look like.
Mandela knew that actions spoke louder than words. This is evident from the fact that he was remarkably disinterested in preserving the heroic cult built around him.
He left explicit instructions, routinely ignored, that he should not be treated as a demigod and that no statues or monolithic structures should be erected in his memory.
On May 31 this year, Sampson’s Bill was passed overwhelmingly in the Nigerian Senate and House of Representatives. President Muhammadu Buhari signed it into law. Any Nigerian from the age of 35 can now run for president and from the age of 25 for the House or State Assembly.
Although he drove the process, Sampson did not achieve this remarkable feat alone. He did it through two years of concerted, strategic mobilisation of young people who cared about representation and wanted a voice in a political system they felt had failed them. For Sampson, as for so many young people on the continent, Mandela’s legacy of belief in the power of youth action is alive and well.
This article was first published on The Conversation
Alan Hirsch is a professor and director of the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance