Are African Youth Truly Free?

 

The Chains We Cannot See: Are African Youth Truly Free?

Author: Rodgers Mangwela

Freedom is more than a flag

A person can walk through a city without chains around their wrists and still spend a lifetime asking permission to live.

That is the uncomfortable question at the heart of freedom. The abolition of slavery ended one of humanity's most brutal systems of forced labour, and African countries eventually fought for and achieved political independence. Flags changed. Governments changed. National anthems changed.

But freedom did not suddenly become a finished product.

For millions of Africans, particularly young people, the meaning of freedom remains complicated. A young Zambian can vote, use a smartphone, start a social-media account, launch a small business and dream of travelling the world. Yet that same person may struggle to find employment, depend on imported goods, consume technology designed elsewhere and compete in a global digital economy where much of the infrastructure and capital is controlled outside Africa.

This is not an argument that Africa is still under colonial rule. It is a question about what independence means when political sovereignty exists alongside economic, technological and intellectual dependencies.

The 1957 novel Mandingo, written by American author Kyle Onstott, is fiction set in the antebellum American South. It should not be treated as a historical account of African slavery. But its brutal depiction of people being reduced to property provides a useful literary starting point for thinking about a much broader question: what does it mean to be genuinely free?

From physical chains to political freedom

The transatlantic slave trade represented an extreme denial of human freedom. People were captured, transported, sold and forced to work under systems that treated human beings as property.

Colonialism created a different system of domination. European powers established political and economic control over large parts of Africa, reorganising territories, institutions and economies around imperial interests.

The independence movements of the 20th Century challenged that political order. Ghana became independent in 1957, followed by a wave of African independence movements. Zambia achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1964.

Political independence mattered enormously. It transferred formal authority from colonial governments to African states and created the political foundation upon which nations could build their own futures.

But independence did not erase every structure created during colonialism.

Many African economies remained heavily dependent on the export of raw materials while importing manufactured products. The result was an uncomfortable contradiction: countries could possess sovereignty over their territory while remaining vulnerable to decisions made elsewhere through trade, finance, technology and investment.

That distinction is important because economic dependence is not the same thing as colonialism. Modern African economies operate within a global system involving governments, private companies, investors and international institutions. Dependency can have many causes, and responsibility cannot simply be assigned to foreign actors.

The question is therefore more complicated: how much control does a country have over the economic choices that determine its people's lives?

The freedom to earn a living

For today's African youth, freedom often begins with something remarkably ordinary: the ability to earn a decent living.

Africa has one of the world's fastest-growing working-age populations. The World Bank says the number of people entering the workforce in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to rise from more than 23 million annually in 2022 to about 27 million by 2030.

That demographic reality presents both an enormous opportunity and a serious challenge.

A young person may have education, creativity and ambition but still struggle to find productive employment. The problem is not necessarily a lack of talent. It can also be a shortage of capital, infrastructure, industrial capacity, market access and opportunities to turn skills into sustainable businesses.

This is where the meaning of freedom becomes economic.

What does freedom mean if someone is legally free to become an entrepreneur but cannot access affordable finance? What does freedom mean if a talented musician can create a song but has little bargaining power in the global music industry? What does freedom mean if an educated graduate can apply for hundreds of jobs but the economy is not creating enough formal opportunities?

These questions do not mean that individuals have no agency. Across Africa, entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, engineers and young innovators are building businesses and careers despite difficult circumstances.

But individual determination cannot substitute indefinitely for functioning economic systems.

The new chains may be digital

The smartphone has become one of the most powerful symbols of modern freedom.

With a few taps, a young African can communicate across continents, learn from universities, market a business, publish a book or reach an international audience. Digital technology has opened opportunities that previous generations could hardly imagine.

But the digital economy also introduces new forms of dependence.

Who owns the platforms? Who controls the infrastructure? Where is data stored? Who determines the rules? Who receives the greatest share of the economic value created by online activity?

These questions have increasingly entered African policy discussions. The UN Economic Commission for Africa reported in 2026 that policymakers were focusing on digital sovereignty, including control over data and digital infrastructure.

Academic researchers have similarly debated what is sometimes called "digital colonialism" a contested concept describing situations in which technological dependence, foreign platforms and data extraction can limit local autonomy.

Yet the digital world should not simply be portrayed as another form of colonialism. The internet has also created genuine opportunities for African participation, entrepreneurship and cultural expression.

The challenge is to ensure that Africans are not merely users of the digital economy, but also its creators, owners and decision-makers.

Intellectual freedom may be the deepest freedom

There is another chain that is harder to see because it exists inside the mind.

Colonialism did not only control territory. It also influenced education, language, institutions and ideas about what constituted knowledge and progress.

Decades after independence, African societies continue to debate the place of indigenous knowledge, African languages, history and cultural identity in education.

Intellectual independence does not mean rejecting knowledge from Europe, Asia or America. That would be another form of isolation.

It means having the confidence to learn from everywhere while also producing knowledge from African experiences.

A child in Kabwe should be able to study global science and technology while also seeing African problems as legitimate subjects for scientific investigation. A Zambian writer should be able to tell a Zambian story without first making it resemble a foreign one to make it valuable.

This is why independent journalism, literature, education and local digital media matter.

A platform such as KASONDE24, for example, can serve a meaningful purpose when it creates space for African stories, ideas and debates to be documented and discussed from within the communities experiencing them. Local media cannot solve structural problems on its own, but controlling the narrative about one's own society is part of intellectual participation.

The generation that could redefine freedom

Africa's young population may ultimately change this conversation.

The World Bank describes Africa as having an enormous demographic opportunity, provided countries invest in education, skills, health and jobs. It also estimates that the continent's young people will constitute a significant share of the world's future population.

Digital technology could accelerate that transformation. The World Bank estimates that sub-Saharan Africa could generate about 230 million digital jobs by 2030, although achieving that potential will require stronger digital skills, infrastructure and access to markets.

That future will not be created simply by waiting for another generation of political leaders.

It will be shaped by teachers, programmers, farmers, musicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, researchers and young people who decide that consumption is not enough.

The real challenge is moving from being customers in other people's economies to becoming owners of productive capacity.

So, are African youth truly free?

There is no simple answer.

African youth are politically freer than generations that lived under colonial rule. They possess unprecedented access to information and global communication. They can create companies, publish ideas and build audiences without waiting for traditional gatekeepers to approve their work.

At the same time, many remain constrained by unemployment, inequality, limited access to capital, weak infrastructure, digital divides and economic structures that can leave countries vulnerable to external shocks.

Freedom, therefore, should not be understood as a single historical moment called independence.

It is a continuing project.

The abolitionist victories of the past removed physical chains. Independence removed colonial political rule. The next generation faces a different task: expanding economic opportunity, strengthening intellectual confidence, building technological capacity and ensuring that the digital future does not simply reproduce old inequalities in a new form.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that freedom is not only the absence of a master.

It is also the presence of choices.

A truly free society is one in which a young person can imagine a future, acquire the knowledge to pursue it, access the resources needed to build it, and have a reasonable chance of succeeding without having to leave home to make the dream possible.

The chains of the past were visible.

The chains of the future may be contracts, algorithms, debt, unemployment, unequal access to knowledge or dependence on systems we do not control.

Recognising them is not an invitation to despair.

It is the beginning of understanding what freedom still requires.

Note: Mandingo is a work of fiction, not a historical record of slavery. The historical and contemporary claims above are grounded primarily in World Bank and UN sources cited in the article.