Battered by inflation and empty promises, can African youth build their own wealth? It’s time to move from surviving to thriving through collective action.
Lately, I have been consuming a lot of content. I have been reading books and following podcasts about creating wealth, shifting to a money mindset, and escaping the rat race. Let us be real, we all want the freedom that wealth provides!
As someone working in the development and humanitarian space, I have found myself questioning a lot of things lately. Is this all there is to life? Living in distressing environments, stationed in regions far away from my family and friends, and missing critical milestones, all in the pursuit of a paycheck?
Thinking long and hard about this set me on a quest for answers. I wanted to know how one can create sustainable wealth in Africa.
The answers I find online, as helpful as they try to be, are heavily biased towards American or European contexts. They thrive on systems that work, seamless banking, structured investment portfolios, and robust retirement schemes. Being Zimbabwean, I know firsthand just how different our reality is. Having witnessed the economic turmoil that saw an entire generation lose their life savings, twice, to hyper-inflation and abrupt currency changes, traditional financial advice feels like a cruel joke. So, when I watch The School of Hard Knocks on YouTube, and the host randomly walks up to millionaires on the street to ask how they made their fortunes and most answer that they invested, it leaves me wondering, what about us?
What does wealth-building look like where systems are inconsistent, opportunities are uneven, and access is limited? Of course, wealth is uneven everywhere in the world, but the truth is, most of us barely have good examples to look up to. Success stories of great people like Strive Masiyiwa, Aliko Dangote, Patrice Motsepe even of powerful religious leaders or politically connected elites often feel unrelatable, they are outliers. While I deeply appreciate successful African entrepreneurs who make a genuine effort to share lessons and inspire us on their platforms, there is a profound disconnect. Sometimes, their nuggets feel worlds away when you are starting with absolutely nothing. Yet, without falling into victimhood, the question remains, what can ordinary young African people do to change the hand we were dealt?
In my own journey, I had the privilege of interviewing dozens of young entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. Many of them started with very little, just an idea, a skill, or a small hobby from which they managed to build thriving businesses through sheer grit. Their stories are inspiring and deeply affirming of the African spirit. Yet almost all of them expressed a shared bottleneck of a severe lack of access to capital that continuously caps their growth and stifles their true potential. Against the backdrop of these struggles, an even heavier question lingers, what about the other young person?
What about the young person who is completely stuck in a profound feeling of doom and gloom? The one sending out countless job applications with no response? The one trapped in a soul-crushing job they absolutely hate, or worse, the one with no income at all, the one trying to stay hopeful in an environment that offers very little reassurance? There is so much talk about "mindset shifts," but it is incredibly difficult to stay afloat and not drown in despair when the surrounding environment offers no clear way out. Where do ordinary young Africans start when they have little to no access to investment capital, negligible savings, yet are carrying a heavy bag of hopes and dreams?
Perhaps the answer does not lie in looking outward for models that do not fit our context. Perhaps it lies in looking inwards, towards something we have always known.
As Africans, we have always been a people who find strength in togetherness. We are built on Ubuntu, the profound understanding that I am because we are. From time immemorial, our communities have leveraged collective power to survive and thrive. We have managed to build micro-economies through stokvels, given decent, dignified send-offs to our loved ones through burial societies, and today, we see collective housing cooperatives mushrooming across our neighborhoods.
We already know how to pool resources to survive. Now, we must learn to pool resources to build wealth. We will go much further together than we ever could taking isolated, exhausting shots at it alone.
So, I am here to sincerely ask, how can we, as young people, both the thriving entrepreneurs and the one fighting off despair, transition this collective energy to build wealth amidst our dysfunctional systems?
How can we come together, without relying on government support, to organize ourselves and pool our financial muscle? I believe the answer lies in establishing a collective investment fund.
Individually, a $50 contribution here or a $100 investment there feels entirely insignificant against the backdrop of massive industries like real estate, commercial farming, or mining. But together, those micro-contributions form a formidable, well-oiled machine with serious financial leverage. And the truth is, we must do this by ourselves because no one else is coming to save us. Government programs have failed us, and traditional institutions lock us out. We must become our own safety net. What if we pooled our resources to create meaningful jobs for ourselves? Imagine a vehicle that allows our young, brilliant entrepreneurs to pitch innovative ideas without financial restraint, while those with management and leadership capabilities run the operations. What if we could venture into mining and create employment for the jobless engineer? What if we could invest in infrastructure and hire the unemployed architect, the builder, the plumber, and in turn, design and build affordable, sustainable housing for ourselves? This is not a perfect or easy solution, it requires a great level of trust, discipline, and uncompromising accountability that is incredibly difficult to maintain. But if we do not go for it, who will?
No single person knows it all, but the capacity, talent, and brilliant skills we need already lie directly among us. What is often missing is the ability to bring these elements together in a structured, intentional way. We have the collective intellect to structure this, and from among ourselves, we can choose leadership defined by both skill and absolute integrity. Individually, it is an uphill battle. But through Ubuntu, as young African people with a desire to do something truly great, we can build a vehicle that changes our economic narrative forever. The question is no longer whether we have the potential, it is whether we are willing to trust each other enough to begin.
