The goal isn’t to make you conscious, the goal is to be in that marvellous state of enlightenment which produces inner self-worth that will make being conscious inevitable.

I guess I ought to start with a commercial… and that is I want you to send me your own version of your life’s blueprint so that I can publish it on this blog for all to benefit and learn. feel free to send to my WhatsApp number on the link below…

https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb7itAK1yT24CHX3Qc30

You can speak, write and record in your own mother tongue, indigenous language.

When we limit our stories to a foreign language such as English – we drown out and exclude many of the older generation who may not be able to speak the foreign language that was imposed to us through colonisation. Also the spirit of the message and the moral of the story may not be captured when speaking in English or any other foreign language.

“A people who have lost their stories have lost their road map.”

Africa has over 2,000 languages and chatgpt and other AI only accounts for 26 of them. So if it only accounts for 26 of those languages – what about for the rest of the continent. So it means that our stories are not told authentically. Feel free to tell your story in your own native indigenous language.

“If you don’t know what happened BEFORE you, you won’t understand what’s happening AROUND you.” Stories are not simply entertainment. Stories tell us who we are.

They teach us where we came from, what we value, what we have survived, and what we can become.

When a people forget their history, they begin to wander. They lose confidence. They lose direction. They start living according to other people’s definitions of success.

But when a people remember their stories, they remember themselves.

And when they remember themselves, they find their road again.

Learn your story. Protect your story. Pass your story on.

Long before microphones and Wi-Fi. Long before WhatsApp groups and social media feeds. Long before books and printing presses and podcasts — our ancestors gathered around fires.
Picture it. The fire in the centre. The elders seated. The children cross-legged at their feet. The night sky enormous above them. And in the space between the flames and the darkness — stories.
They passed wisdom through stories. Culture through stories. Identity through stories. Hope through stories. Stories taught us who we were. Stories reminded us where we came from. Stories helped us imagine where we could go.
The West African historian, storyteller, musicians(griot) existed precisely because a community without its story is a community without its soul. The griot was not merely an entertainer. He was the living archive. The keeper of lineages, battles, migrations, alliances, and wisdom. Before anything was written down, the griot carried it — memorised, rehearsed, and passed on with the care of someone who understood that forgetting was a form of dying.
The izibongo tradition of the Zulu and Xhosa peoples — the praise poems — served the same sacred function. To recite your praise poem was to locate yourself in time and in the community. It said: I know where I come from. I know what my people stood for. I know the strength that flows in my blood.
As the proverb says, “A person is not buried in the forest and forgotten.” Your story matters. It deserves to be told. It deserves to be remembered. And it is your responsibility — not someone else’s — to tell it.
Tell your story. Tell your grandmother’s story. Tell your community’s story. Because until the lion learns to write, every story glorifies the hunter. For too long, Africa’s story has been told by those who came to take from it. By the coloniser. By the explorer. By the journalist parachuting in for forty-eight hours. By the filmmaker who showed only famine and conflict. By the textbook written by someone who had never set foot on this beautiful African continent. Their version of the story was never the full story. It was never even an honest story. It was a story designed to justify what was being done to us.
So write your own. Speak your own. Teach your own and live your own truth, because the stories we tell shape the lives we live — and Africa’s children deserve a story that begins in greatness, not in chains.

The youth who do not feel the love of the village will burn it to feel it’s warmth.

But before I go any further — I want you to do something for me.

Put your phone down. Not on your lap. Not face down on the desk. Not balanced on your knee where you think I cannot see it. Down. Completely down. Because what I am about to say is worth more than whatever notification just lit up that screen.

And I say that not as a request. I say it as a challenge.

I can see some of you doing the slow, casual slide. The phone disappearing into the pocket like nothing happened. I appreciate the effort. That counts.

Because here is what I have noticed. We live in a world where a person can sit in a room full of people — and be completely alone. You can be physically present and mentally a thousand miles away. You can look like you are here, nod like you are listening, and not receive a single word that was spoken. We have perfected the art of being somewhere without actually being there.

The device in your pocket is very, very good at helping you disappear. And I am not going to compete with it. So I am asking you — just for now — to put it away.

Because I want to tell you something. And I want you to actually hear it.

I asked a student once how much his phone cost. He thought about it and said — five hundred dollars. Confident. Proud, even. Like he had done the research and found a good deal.

I looked at him and said: you forgot to read the price tag.

He looked at me like I had said something slightly strange. Which, fair enough — I probably had.

But I meant it.

Because the sticker price is not the real price. The sticker price is what it costs the shop. Your price — the price you personally pay — is something else entirely.

Here is how I calculated it.

The average person spends seven hours a day staring at a screen. Not working. Not creating. Not building anything that will outlast them. Just — watching. Scrolling. Consuming. Seven hours a day is forty-nine hours a week. That is nearly two full days every single week handed over to a device.

Two days. Every week. Gone.

And I want to be fair — some of that is genuinely useful. Maps. Messages. Research. I understand. But let us be honest with each other. We both know that is not where the seven hours is going. The seven hours is going to a fifteen-second video of a cat doing something mildly impressive — followed by another one — followed by forty more — and suddenly it is 2am and you have learned absolutely nothing except that cats, apparently, have no respect for personal space.

Now take those hours and ask yourself a different question. Not what did I watch — but what could I have done? What skill could I have been developing? What book could I have read, what conversation could I have had, what problem could I have been solving, what version of myself could I have been becoming — in those exact same hours?

Multiply that lost potential across a year. Across the compounding returns of knowledge, skill, discipline, and human connection that you did not build — because you were watching instead of doing.

And in my opinion — conservatively — that phone is costing you at least twenty thousand dollars a year. Not to own it. To watch it. Owning it is cheap. Watching it is what bankrupts you. Not in your bank account — but in your potential. In your time. In the life you could have been living.

Twenty thousand dollars a year — to watch.

Now, I am not telling you to throw your phone into the sea. Though I will admit — on certain days — the thought has crossed my mind.

I am not standing here pretending I do not have one. A little scrolling, a little entertainment — that is human. That is fine. Rest is not the enemy. Mindless consumption disguised as rest — that is the enemy. There is a difference between choosing to rest and defaulting to distraction. One restores you. The other quietly steals from you while you smile at a screen.

But twenty thousand dollars? Nobody in this room should be paying that price to sit still.

Now — here is the example I want you to sit with.

Imagine two students. Same school. Same classroom. Same teacher. Same opportunities laid in front of them like cards on a table. To look at them on the first day — you cannot tell them apart.

Student A goes home every evening and spends three hours on his phone. Not three hours doing something with his phone — just on it. Reels, clips, highlights, drama, noise. Three hours a night, every night, for three years of secondary school.

Now before you judge Student A — Student A is not doing anything that millions of people are not doing right now as we speak. Student A is just being completely, perfectly, ordinarily human. There is no villain in this story. Just a price tag that nobody pointed out.

Student B goes home and spends one of those hours reading — anything, something, whatever pulls at his curiosity. One hour of deliberate input. Every night. For three years.

Now do the maths with me.

Three years. One hour a night. Three hundred and sixty-five hours a year.

In three years, Student B has spent over a thousand hours building something inside himself — knowledge, vocabulary, ideas, perspective, the ability to think clearly and speak well — while Student A spent that same thousand hours watching other people live their lives on a four-inch screen.

Same school. Same teacher. Same starting line.

But they do not finish in the same place.

And here is the part that should make you a little uncomfortable: Student A is not lazy. Student A is not a bad person. Student A is not even doing anything that feels wrong in the moment — because it never does. It feels like a break. It feels like nothing. That is exactly what makes it so expensive.

Student A just never stopped to read the price tag.

So I will ask you only once more.

Is your phone down?

Good. The ones still hiding it — I see you. We will deal with that later.

Because what comes next — is worth every second of your attention.

Take a breath.

Not a polite breath. A real one. Fill your lungs. Hold it. Let it go.

Now look around this room. Not at your phone. Not at the ceiling. At the faces around you. Really look. Because one day — years from now — you may not remember every word spoken in this room today. You may not remember who stood on this stage. But you might remember a feeling. A moment when something shifted quietly inside you. A moment when a thought arrived and simply refused to leave.

Those moments matter more than we realise.

And here is something I wish someone had told me when I was your age: almost everything in life happens for the first time — and for the last time. We just never know which moment is which.

Think about that.

The last time you play football with your childhood friends before life pulls everyone in different directions — you will not know it is the last time. You will just think it is a Tuesday afternoon. The last ordinary conversation with someone you love. The last school day before everything changes. The last laugh before distance turns that person into a memory.

You never know which moment is the last one.

Only God knows our story from beginning to end. We make plans. We say I’ll do it tomorrow. We say one day. We say later. But tomorrow is a gift that nobody sitting in this room has been promised. Not me. Not you. None of us.

And I am not saying that to scare you. I am saying the exact opposite.

Because the real question is not what if I run out of time? The real question is — what do I do with the time I have right now? How do I show up fully? How do I squeeze every lesson from every conversation, every chance to learn, every chance to build, every chance to become something I am proud of?

Because nothing — nothing — lasts forever.

So I made myself a rule. And I want to share it with you.

This very minute should not be treated like a qualifying match. Nor a test series. Nor a playoff. Nor a preliminary round or a group stage. This minute — right now — is the World Cup Final if it is football. The Masters if it is golf. The ICC Cricket World Cup if it is cricket. The Rugby World Cup if it is rugby. The Grand Slam if it is tennis. The Olympic Games if it is athletics.

You get the point.

Treat every minute of every single day as if it is The Final. The last game. The one that counts. The one you will never get again. Play it like everything depends on it — because in a quiet, real way, it does. Not because life should feel like pressure. But because it should feel like it matters. Because you are awake. Because you are grateful. Because you understand that this exact moment — this room, these faces, this conversation — will never happen again in exactly this way.

So let us make it count.

Now — here is the thing about Finals.

They do not just happen.

Nobody walks onto the pitch at the World Cup Final without years of preparation behind them. Nobody stands on the Olympic podium without thousands of hours of deliberate, disciplined, unglamorous work that nobody ever photographed or applauded. The Final is the visible moment. But behind every Final is an invisible architecture — a structure, a system, a plan — that made it possible.

The Springboks did not win the Rugby World Cup by showing up on the day and hoping for the best. The All Blacks do not become the All Blacks through talent alone. Every team that lifts a trophy does so because someone, somewhere, sat down long before the tournament began and asked a very specific question:

What exactly are we building — and how are we going to build it?

And that question — that single, powerful question — is the one I want to ask you today.

What is your life’s blueprint?

I want to ask you a question and that is – what is in your life’s blueprint?

This is the most important and crucial period of your life for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go. And whenever a building is constructed – you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint. And that blueprint serves as a pattern, as the guide, as the model for those who are to build a building. And a building is not well erected without a good, sound and solid blueprint. Each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives. And the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.

And whether you realise it or not — you are already building something. Right now. With every choice you make, every habit you keep, every person you allow into your life, every morning you decide how to spend. You are laying bricks. The question is not whether you are building.

The question is: what blueprint are you building from?

Because some people are building from a blueprint somebody else handed them — a blueprint that was designed for someone else’s life, someone else’s destination, someone else’s definition of success. And they will work hard, and they will be busy, and one day they will look up and realise they built the wrong thing. They spent their whole life playing a Final — but for the wrong team. In the wrong stadium. In a game they never chose.

I do not want that for you.

So if you will give me your time — and I promise to make it worth your while — I want to suggest what I believe should be in your blueprint. Not as someone who has it all figured out. But as someone who has been on the road long enough to learn a few things the hard way.

Think of these not as three separate ideas. Think of them as three pillars holding up the same roof. Remove any one of them and the structure weakens. Keep all three — and what you build will stand through any storm.

Three chapters. The road taught me…

First: Believe deeply in your own self-worth.

Second: Pursue excellence.

Third: Remember Ubuntu.

Let us begin.

Chapter One: Believe Deeply in Your Worth

History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most important, history tells a people, where they still must go and what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child. – Professor John Henrik Clarke

The greatest crime committed against the African people was to destroy your confidence in your historical memory of what you have been so that you can forget what you are and also forget what you still can be.

You cannot oppress a historical people. And once a people understand the nature of their role in history – they will not permit themselves to be oppressed. In order to oppress you – people must remove you from the respectful commentary of history. They must destroy your confidence and historical memory. The memory of what you were so that you can be confused about what you are and more confused about what still you must be and where you must go.

***The way you exercise what you think about yourself is how you relate to your reflection. So the brain computer says there’s another one just like you Yusuf – then how I feel about myself will be reflected to how I relate to another African. The same way we get to engage in exercises to keep our muscles in shape. Now we are going to do exercises to get our brains in shape in our self-image, self-concept and self-worth so that we can be effective sons and daughters of Africa. Because if I think negatively about myself – do you think my brain computer will work on my behalf, to optimize my success and development – NO! the brain will say – you don’t like yourself – why should I work on your behalf***

If we know what happened yesterday, we can intelligently discuss today because today is built on yesterday. And tomorrow is built on today

The Child Who is Not Embraced by the Village Will Burn It Down to Feel its Warmth – African Proverb

Much of the destruction we see in our communities — the anger, the recklessness, the young person throwing their future away — is not really destruction. Look closer. It is a cry. A desperate, burning cry that says: somebody please tell me I am worth something.

And so before we talk about excellence — before we talk about Ubuntu — before we talk about history and heritage and what you are capable of building — we have to start here. With this. With the most important thing I will say today.

You have worth. Deep, unconditional, non-negotiable worth. Not because of what you have achieved. Not because of how you look. Not because of where you come from or what your circumstances are. Simply because you are here. Because you are alive. Because you exist.

And nothing — nothing — that anyone has ever said or done to make you feel otherwise was ever the truth.

Self-worth is like honour, in the sense that it is something everyone is born with, it cannot be taken away from you, nor can it be granted, it must only not be lost.

Now here is where it gets interesting, because knowing your worth is one thing. But understanding where that worth comes from — that is something else entirely. And most of us have never been properly taught that second part

The Story of the Baobab Tree

The baobab is called the Tree of Life across Africa. It lives for thousands of years. It stores water in its trunk — sometimes thousands of litres — so that in the driest season, when everything else has withered, the baobab remains full. Animals come to it. Communities shelter under it. It gives even when the land gives nothing. And the secret of the baobab is not visible. It is underground — a root system so vast and so deep that no drought can reach it. The tree survives not because of how it looks above ground. It survives because of how deep it has gone below.

Your worth is like that tree. And this is the truth that the world around you — with its obsession with appearance, money, social media followers, clothing, titles, and fame — will never tell you.

Your true worth is not what is visible. It is the depth of your roots.

Leaves can fall. Seasons change. What you own today can be gone tomorrow. But roots — roots of character, of identity, of history, of culture, of knowing who you are and where you come from — those remain. Those are what hold you upright when everything above the ground is shaking.

And this is why what I am about to say matters so much. Because many of us — through no fault of our own — were never given our roots. They were not planted in us. They were not taught. In some cases, they were deliberately taken away. And a person without roots is not necessarily someone who falls immediately. They may look tall. They may look impressive. But they are one strong wind away from collapse.

***But — and this is the part that cuts deepest — many of us do not believe this. Not really. Not in the quiet moments when the world is not watching and we are alone with our own thoughts. Because we were not taught to believe it. We were taught something else entirely.

Toni Morrison understood this. She wrote: “Freeing yourself was one thing. Claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

Two different things. Removing the chain is one step. But learning who you are after the chain is gone — deciding for yourself what you are worth, what you deserve, what you are capable of — that is a different and deeper journey. And it is the journey many of us have not yet fully begun.***

Now I want to ask you the question that sits underneath all of this.

Where does your story begin?

Because there is a profound Igbo proverb that says: “If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.” Your starting point shapes your destination. The story you begin with — about who you are, where you come from, what your people have accomplished — quietly determines the direction of your entire life. Whether you reach for big things or settle for small ones. Whether you walk into rooms with your head up or your eyes down. Whether you see your features as something to be ashamed of or something to be celebrated.

And here is something else — something that one African scholar put in the most direct terms I have ever heard: “Outsiders and foreigners cannot educate you in the techniques you can use to take their power away from them.” Those who benefit from your ignorance are not going to give you the tools to become truly free. Every community of people must study their own history, their own strengths, their own identity — not as handed to them by those who had reasons to diminish it, but as it actually was.

A Guinean proverb says: “Knowledge is like a garden — if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.” Your identity, your worth, your understanding of who you are — these are not automatic. They require work. They require cultivation. They require the courage to dig, to question, to learn things you were never taught in a classroom.

And until you do that work — until you go back to the beginning of your story and start from the right place — you will always be building your sense of self on someone else’s foundation.

***Marcus Garvey said it plainly: “My skin is not a badge of shame but rather a badge of beauty.”

Not an apology. Not a disclaimer. A declaration.

And the scholar who said that we have made a huge mistake by reducing African identity to a skin colour alone — he was pointing at something even deeper. He said: the proper name of a people must always relate to land, culture, and history. Because your skin describes how you look. It does not tell you who you are. Who you are comes from your history. Your language. Your ancestors. Your civilisation. Your values. Your story***

And your story — the real, full, unedited version — is extraordinary. It is one of the greatest stories in human history. Most of you have simply never been told it properly.

Today’s circumstances do not determine tomorrow’s possibilities. And the roots you discover — or rediscover — today will determine how tall you can stand tomorrow.

So let us go back to the beginning.

Let us start from the right place.

And let us build our worth on a foundation that no storm, no lie, no system, and no room full of doubt can ever take from us.

Let me ask you something.

Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt like you did not belong there?

Like everyone else got the memo and you did not. Like they were all speaking a language you were never taught. Like somehow, without anyone saying a single word, the room had already decided you were less than the people in it.

I want you to raise your hand if you have ever felt that way.

Keep it raised for a second. Look around. Because you are not alone in this room. And you were never alone in that feeling. But here is what I need you to understand before we go any further — that feeling lied to you. It has always lied to you. And today, we are going to talk about why.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody.”

And the Yoruba — one of the great peoples of West Africa — have a proverb that says: “The lizard that jumped from the high Iroko tree said he would praise himself if no one else did.”

Think about that lizard for a moment. He jumped. Nobody clapped. Nobody noticed. Nobody ran over to congratulate him. So he turned around and said — you know what, I see what I just did, and it was remarkable. I will celebrate myself.

That lizard understood something that many of us spend years trying to learn: your worth is not decided by the applause. It is decided by you.

You are valuable in the space you occupy. You do not need to earn the right to be here. You do not need to justify your existence to anyone. You can enjoy your life without explaining yourself to the world. And the journey to truly believing that — the journey of self-love — starts on the inside. It always starts on the inside. No matter what the world outside is saying about you, the journey begins within. And it continues with healing. With learning. With thriving. One day at a time.

Self-worth is not a feeling you wait for. It is a decision. A daily decision to show up fully and honestly — even when the room feels like it was not built for you.

But here is where I have to be real with you.

Making that decision is harder than it sounds. Because we are living in a complicated time. Existing in this era comes with many contradictions — because so many of us are carrying ideas inside us that we never chose. Ideas that were placed there before we were old enough to question them. Things we were told about who we are, what we look like, where we come from, and what we are worth — and we absorbed them like water, without realising we were drinking poison.

And before you can truly decide your worth, you have to be honest about this. You have to be brave enough to look at what is inside you and ask: did I choose this? Or was it handed to me?

There is a truth that says: “The birth of wisdom is associated with the knowledge of your ignorance.”

In other words — the smartest thing you can ever do is admit what you do not know.

Think about the young Xhosa boy entering ulwaluko — the traditional initiation into manhood. He does not walk into that process as an expert. He walks in as a student. Everything familiar is stripped away. He sits before his elders, humbled, empty, open. And the elders pour wisdom into him — but only because he is willing to admit he does not yet have it.

You cannot fill a cup that is already full.

Think about the young girl sitting at her grandmother’s feet, learning to weave, learning the songs of her people, learning which plants behind the homestead heal fever and which ones heal heartbreak. She does not arrive knowing. She arrives asking. And in that asking — in that humble, courageous act of saying I do not know, please teach me — wisdom is born.

This is what our ancestors understood. This is why they honoured the elder. Not just because of age — but because the elder had spent a whole lifetime turning ignorance into understanding. The elder knew how much they did not know. And that knowing was their greatest power.

Many of us do not know our own history.

And I want to say this clearly: that is not our fault. But staying in that ignorance — that would be our choice.

Because what we were taught in school was not the full story. Not even close. The colonial classroom gave us a very specific version of history — a version that started our story in chains, in defeat, in somebody else’s definition of who we are. It skipped everything that came before. And what came before was extraordinary.

But here is what makes this even more painful. It was not just an accident that we were not taught our history. It was a deliberate strategy. Because if you can make a people hate themselves — if you can get them to look at their own image and feel disgust instead of pride — you do not need chains anymore. You have done something far more powerful. You have turned them against each other.

Think about that. If I teach you to hate yourself — truly hate yourself — then when you look at someone who looks like you, someone who shares your features, your skin, your hair, your blood — you do not see a brother. You do not see a sister. You see the thing you have been taught to despise. And the violence that follows is not random. It is the logical outcome of miseducation. We have been taught to fight each other precisely so we would not stand together. Because the only way a minority can control a majority is through divide and conquer. And the most effective version of divide and conquer does not happen on a battlefield. It happens in the mind.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey said it plainly: a people without knowledge of their history, culture, and self is like a tree without roots. And a tree without roots cannot stand. It cannot grow. It cannot survive any storm. It simply falls — not because it was weak, but because it was cut off from its source.

And here is the crime that was committed against us — and I want you to hear this clearly — it was not just a crime of what they did to us. It was a crime of what they hid from us. A crime of omission as well as a crime of commission. They did not just attack us. They robbed us of the knowledge of ourselves. The knowledge that would have caused us to love ourselves. To love one another. To stand together instead of tearing each other apart.

Where does your story begin?

Because here is the truth — and this is important, so stay with me: where you start your history will determine where you end up. If the only African history you know begins in 1619, when slavery started, then your sense of who you are also begins in chains. In suffering. In someone else’s story about your worth. And most likely — without even realising it — you will move through life carrying that starting point in your bones.

But what if you started somewhere else?

What if you started 4,700 years ago — when African hands were building the pyramids? When African minds were calculating mathematics that the rest of the world had not even imagined yet? When African kings were commissioning architecture so precise that modern engineers still study it and shake their heads?

Everything changes when you start there. You become free. Because the starting point of your history is the starting point of your identity. And the starting point of your identity shapes the entire trajectory of your life.

This is not just inspiration. This is strategy.

Let me tell you what that history actually looks like. Because some of you have been told so little of it that what I am about to say may feel unbelievable.

Psychologists called it Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort you feel when your actions, attitudes, or beliefs clash with one another. This mental tension—often experienced as stress or guilt—drives the brain to subconsciously rationalize the conflict or alter a belief to restore mental harmony.

And that is exactly what Malcolm X warned us about. He said: “You have to be very careful introducing the truth to the African who has never previously heard the truth about himself. The African is so brainwashed that he may reject the truth when he first hears it.”

And James Baldwin — one of the most honest writers who ever lived — said something that I want you to carry with you. He said: “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the Earth as though I had a right to be here.”

Years. Of deliberately unlearning a false story about himself. Before he could simply stand on the earth and feel like he belonged there.

Because this is the thing they do not want you to know. This is the thing that Marcus Garvey was warning us about when he said: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”

Physical chains were broken a long time ago. But mental slavery? Mental slavery is still very much alive. And it is sneaky. It does not look like a chain. It does not feel like a prison. It feels like normal. It feels like just the way things are. It feels like — of course I want lighter skin. Of course I straighten my hair for job interviews. Of course I am embarrassed to speak my mother tongue in a formal setting. Of course I know more about European history than my own.

That is the cage. And the most dangerous thing about this cage is that it convinces the person inside it that there are no walls. Or worse — that the walls are there for their own good.

Steve Biko — one of the most important thinkers this continent has ever produced — said something that should stop every one of us cold. He said: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

Think about what that means. The most powerful weapon is not a gun. Not a law. Not a border drawn on a map. It is a thought. A belief. A quiet, persistent whisper inside a person’s own mind that says — you are less. You do not deserve more. Know your place. Stay small.

If that whisper can be planted deeply enough — if it can be made to feel like your own voice, your own conclusion, your own honest assessment of yourself — then no chains are needed. The prisoner locks their own door. And the most terrifying thing about that kind of imprisonment is that it does not look like a prison. It looks like normal. It feels like just the way things are.

So I am asking you to stay open. Even if what I am about to say surprises you.

Before Europe had cities — before the great European capitals existed — there was Kemet. Ancient Egypt. And the word Kemet, in the original language of its own people, means The Black Land. Not named for its soil alone. Named for its people. Black. Melanated. African.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt were not the pale; light-skinned figures Hollywood has been projecting onto screens for decades. Look at the actual statues. Look at the carvings. Look at the hieroglyphs — carved into stone thousands of years before anyone tried to rewrite the story. The broad nose. The full lips. The tightly coiled hair. The deep brown skin. These were not incidental details. These were the faces of kings and queens, architects and astronomers, mathematicians and physicians.

These were your faces.

And the artefacts do not lie. Archaeologists found wide-toothed hair combs in ancient Egyptian tombs — not the fine, narrow-toothed combs designed for straight hair, but wide, carefully crafted combs designed specifically for thick, tightly coiled, African hair. The kind of hair that sits on your head like a crown. The kind of hair that some of you have been told to hide, relax, or apologise for. They found shea butter, castor oil, and other natural preparations used to moisturise and celebrate African skin and hair. They found cornrows, locs, and twisted styles on the heads of both royalty and ordinary people — the exact same styles that Black women and men still wear today. The same styles the world now borrows, patents, and calls trendy — forgetting that your grandmothers were wearing them thousands of years before it became fashionable.

They found surgical tools that predate European medicine by thousands of years. Evidence of brain surgery, dentistry, pharmacology. Architectural calculations so advanced that modern engineers still study them with awe. The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest structure on earth for nearly four thousand years. Built by African hands. Designed by African minds. Commissioned by African kings.

That is your inheritance.

The Zimbabwe ruins — stone fitted so precisely together that you cannot slide a piece of paper between the blocks, and they used no mortar.

The Mali Empire under Mansa Musa — the wealthiest individual in all of recorded human history.

Timbuktu — An ancient city of learning, home to the University of Sankore, where tens of thousands of scholars studied law, mathematics, astronomy, and theology centuries before many European universities existed.

And here is something most people — even most Africans — have never been told.

Africans ruled Spain for 774 years. From 711 CE to 1485 CE. Nearly eight centuries. And during that time, they did not just conquer land — they built civilisation. They brought the university system into Europe. They built the University of Salamanca in Spain — the first and oldest university in the Western world. And that university was modelled on the University of Jenne in ancient Ghana, which was itself modelled on the University of Sankore in Timbuktu. African intellectual tradition flowing from one generation to the next, from one continent to the next, building systems of knowledge that Europe would later claim as its own. They introduced the bath to Europe. Basic hygiene. Soap. Running water in buildings. Things that medieval Europe did not have — and that Africans brought with them. If you do not believe me, read Stanley Lane-Poole’s The Moors in Spain, written in 1887. Or Alejandro Makaziza on the same subject. The evidence is there. It was never hidden from the people who wanted to find it.

The Benin Kingdom produced bronze castings so refined that when European explorers first saw them, they refused to believe Africans had made them.

They were wrong.

Africa was not a continent waiting to be discovered. Africa was a continent that had already arrived. Had already built. Had already taught the world.

So now let me speak very plainly — no more history lesson, just me talking directly to you.

If you look at the African self-image today — the image many of us carry when we look in the mirror — that image was not created by us. It was created for us. Built over centuries of deliberate miseducation. And the result is that many of us have grown up without a healthy respect for ourselves. Without a deep, rooted love for who we are. And here is the painful truth that follows from that: if we do not have respect for ourselves, we cannot expect anyone else to show it to us. Respect flows outward from the inside. You cannot demand from others what you have not first built within yourself. And you cannot build respect for something you do not know. That is the crime — the knowledge of self was stolen from us so that we would not love ourselves. So that we would not love each other. So that we would remain divided, manageable, and easy to control.

But that ends today. For you. In this room.

Do not reach for the skin-lightening cream.

I am serious. Do not. Because the melanin in your skin is not a flaw. It is a feature. It is ancient. It is powerful. It is the same pigment that protected your ancestors while they built civilisations the world still cannot fully explain. Your dark skin is not a problem to be solved. It is evidence of a people built to thrive.

Do not burn your hair straight to look like someone else. Your coils, your kinks, your locs — they are not unprofessional. They are not unkempt. They are the same hair that sat on the heads of pharaohs. The same hair that African queens adorned with gold. The same hair that needed those wide-toothed combs in the tombs of Kemet. The same hair that has survived every single attempt to make you ashamed of it.

You are not a copy of someone else’s standard of beauty. You are the original.

That is the weight that has been placed on African shoulders. A weight we did not choose. A story we did not write. But one we have been carrying — in our skin-lightening creams, in our chemically straightened hair, in our foreign accents, in our embarrassment about our mother tongues, in every moment we looked in the mirror and felt ashamed of what looked back.

That weight ends the moment you decide it ends.

And this is why — this is the reason — that what we teach our children matters more than almost anything else we will ever do as adults. If we wish to make our children’s lives better, one of the most important things we can do is teach them the knowledge of themselves. As parents, as guardians, as teachers, as elders — we have to keep instilling in them the love and pride of being African. We have to teach them their history. Show them their roots so they can grow up with a genuine love for who they are. So they can find security within themselves. Not feeling inferior. But not feeling falsely superior either. Simply self-assured. Confident. Able to speak the truth without fear. Not bending when they do not have to. Not pretending. Looking people in the eye and speaking honestly.

Because if you do not teach a child who they are, they will not know what to do with their life. They will not know how to set goals worthy of themselves. They will not know what they are capable of. They will spend their whole lives building toward someone else’s definition of success — chasing a version of themselves that was designed by people who never had their best interests at heart.

Identity is not decoration. Identity is the foundation. And a life built without a foundation is always one strong wind away from collapse.

So I want to encourage you — urgently, not angrily — to learn your history. Not from where slavery started. Not from where colonialism began. Go further back. Go to Kemet. Go to Kush. Go to Mali. Go to Great Zimbabwe. Go to Timbuktu. Go to Moorish Spain. Read Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, Ivan Van Sertima, Chancellor Williams, Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Stanley Lane-Poole. Because a people who do not know their history are like a tree without roots — tall enough to look impressive, but one strong wind away from collapse.

You need your people. And your people need you to know who you are.

Because self-worth without character is just ego. But self-worth with character — with knowledge, with history, with purpose — that is somebodiness. And as the saying goes: the cowry shell does not know its own value until it is worn by the right person. Know your value before the world tries to assign it. Know it so deeply, so completely, that no room, no mirror, no industry, no border, no lie told across generations can take it from you.

You are not just an individual building a life. You are an African. Heir to the greatest story never fully told. Carrier of a civilisation that refused to be erased. Part of a people who — when they finally remember who they are — will shake the entire world.

And the remembering starts here. In this room. With you.

It starts with the courage to say: I did not know enough. But I am choosing to know now.

Before you can build a future, you must know your worth. And before you can know your worth, you must know who you are.

Baldwin got there. After years of unlearning, he got there. He finally stood on the earth as though he had a right to be there. And so will you. Because the unlearning is not the destination — it is the doorway. And on the other side of that doorway is not just knowledge.

It is freedom.

The freedom to know where you come from. The freedom to stand fully in who you are. The freedom to walk into any room on this earth — not as an apology, not as a question, not as someone waiting to be told they belong.

But as an arrival.

And to truly understand yourself — your history, your features, your heritage, your worth — is not merely an act of self-discovery.

It is the meaning of life itself

Painful clarity is better than strung out confusing hope, your past does not dictate your future and perceived failures do not define you, for progress one must chose the uncomfortable option again and again and again, it doesn’t come any easier but we only become stronger and more resilient

Protect your environment. Protect your circle. Protect your mind. Because you do not rise to the level of your dreams — you fall to the level of your environment. When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind. Stay sharp. Stay aware of who and what surrounds you. Do not sit in the company of people who dim your light. Because — as the elders say — a single bracelet does not jingle.

Great results are the by-product of great actions Great actions are the by-product of great beliefs. If your beliefs don’t serve you, or worse, work against you, you’ll have a hard time generating the results you want in your life.

Chapter Two: Pursue Excellence

“When you discover what you want to be in life, set out to do as if God almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. And just don’t set out to a good job that anyone can do, set out to do a good job and do that job so well that the living, the dead and the unborn couldn’t do it any better.” Dr. Martin Luther King.

Secondly, in your life’s blueprint, you must have as a basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavour.

Excellence, however, is not an accident. It is not a title bestowed on the lucky or the naturally gifted — it is a path, deliberately chosen and daily walked. Every name history remembers for greatness — whether on the canvas, on the track, on the stage, or at the podium — followed the same road, even if they never called it by name. That road has five markers. Know them, walk them, and you will find that excellence stops being a distant ideal and becomes, instead, the shape of your everyday life.

1. Know who you are.

Excellence begins not with imitation, but with an honest reckoning of your own nature — your gifts, your temperament, the particular thing you were built to do. Ben Enwonwu understood this early. Rather than simply replicating European artistic traditions, he fused Yoruba and Igbo sensibilities with modernist technique, producing paintings and sculptures — like his iconic Anyanwu — that could only have come from someone who knew exactly whose eyes he was seeing the world through. He didn’t paint like a European master. He painted like Ben Enwonwu, because that is who he knew himself to be.

Self-knowledge is the foundation every other point rests on. You cannot become the best version of yourself if you don’t first know what “yourself” actually is — your instincts, your calling, the thing that feels less like a choice and more like an identity.

2. Become the best version of who you are.

Once you know your nature, the work becomes refining it relentlessly — not chasing someone else’s blueprint. Eliud Kipchoge is the clearest modern example of this. He did not try to become a sprinter, a footballer, or anything other than a marathoner. He took that one identity and pursued it with such singular devotion that he became the first human being to run a marathon in under two hours, and holds the marathon world record with a discipline so consistent that fellow athletes and coaches often describe it as monastic. He is not the best runner in the world at every distance — he became the best possible version of exactly what he is.

This is the difference between imitation and mastery: imitation copies someone else’s excellence; mastery deepens your own.

3. Use your gifts to serve others.

Talent that serves only the self is incomplete. Miriam Makeba used her voice not merely to entertain but to carry the truth of apartheid to a world that needed to hear it — becoming, in effect, the international soundtrack of South Africa’s liberation struggle. Her music was inseparable from her purpose. Similarly, Kwame Nkrumah took his intellectual gifts — his education, his political vision, his understanding of colonial systems — and used them not for personal ambition alone, but to lead Ghana to become the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence, and to plant the seed of Pan-Africanism that would shape the continent’s political imagination for generations.

Both figures remind us that the highest use of a gift is not accumulation, but contribution. What good is a voice no one hears, or a vision that serves no one but yourself?

4. Love the process.

Excellence is rarely a single triumphant moment — it is thousands of unremarkable ones, repeated with devotion. Fela Kuti did not stumble into Afrobeat by accident. He spent years fusing highlife, jazz, and funk, experimenting relentlessly with rhythm, language, and political message until an entirely new genre emerged — one that took Africa’s musical heritage and gave it a global voice. Hugh Masekela walked a similar road with the trumpet, refining his sound across decades of exile, collaboration, and performance, carrying South African jazz onto global stages not through one lucky break but through a lifetime of practiced dedication.

Neither man arrived instantly. Both loved the daily work — the rehearsal, the failed experiment, the small adjustment — long before the world ever called them great.

5. Never stop improving.

Even mastery has more road ahead of it. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o had already achieved international literary success writing in English when he made the radical decision to write in Gikuyu instead — a deliberate act to reclaim African languages in literature and challenge the colonial hold on how African stories get told. It would have been easy to rest on his acclaim. He chose, instead, to keep growing. Chinua Achebe followed a parallel path: Things Fall Apart alone would have secured his legacy, reshaping how the world reads African stories and countering centuries of distorted colonial narratives. Yet he continued writing — novels, essays, criticism — refusing to let one masterpiece become the final word.

Their example is clear: excellence is not a peak you reach and plant a flag on. It is a direction you keep walking in, even after the world has already called you great.

There is a quote that goes ‘If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door’ – meaning that if you create or do something exceptionally well, people will seek you out and support your work, regardless of any hindrance or obstacle that may be surrounding you.

If it falls your luck to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote novels and plays, choosing to write in Gikuyu to reclaim African languages in literature

Sweep streets like Like Fela Kuti composed and performed Afrobeat, fusing jazz, funk, and highlife into something entirely new

Sweep streets like Like Chinua Achebe wrote novels, reshaping how the world reads African stories with Things Fall Apart

Sweep streets like Like Miriam Makeba sang truth to power, her voice becoming the soundtrack of the anti-apartheid struggle,

Sweep streets like Like Hugh Masekela played the trumpet, carrying South African jazz to stages across the globe,

Sweep streets Like Kwame Nkrumah envisioned Pan-Africanism, leading Ghana to become the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence

Sweep streets like Like Ben Enwonwu painted and sculpted, capturing modern African art on canvas and in bronze,

Sweep streets like Like Eliud Kipchoge ran the marathon, becoming the first person to run one in under two hours and holding the world record with a discipline many call almost monk-like.

Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say here live a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the rill. Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun be a star; It isn’t by size that you win or fail – be the best of whatever you are.

Excellence is bringing your very best into every room, every task, and every opportunity life places before you.

Repeat that long enough and excellence stops being an accident.

It becomes part of who you are.

Chapter Three: Remember Ubuntu

The African word, the word that holds more wisdom than most philosophy books — is Ubuntu.

I am because we are.

Say it slowly. Let it settle. Because it is not just a slogan. It is not a hashtag. It is not a motivational poster on a conference room wall. Ubuntu is a complete philosophy of existence. It says: I do not become fully human in isolation. My humanity is activated, deepened, and completed through my connection to other human beings. I am not whole without you. And you are not whole without me. We make each other real.

The Swahili remind us: “Mkono mmoja haulei mwana.” One hand cannot nurse a child. Think about what that quote says. The most fundamental act of care — the raising of a child — cannot be done by one person alone. Not one mother. Not one father. Not one family. It takes a community. It takes neighbours who notice. Elders who counsel. Friends who show up at the right moment with the right word. The village is not a metaphor. The village is a survival strategy.

And yet somewhere along the road of modernity, many of us were sold a different story. The story of the self-made man. The lone genius. The individual who needs no one, owes nothing, and rises entirely on his own steam. It is a compelling story. It is also — and I say this carefully — a lie.

Because there is no such thing as a self-made person. There is only a person who forgot to count the people who helped them.

Think of the Harambee tradition in Kenya. The word itself — harambee — means let us all pull together. It is not a government programme. It is a cultural practice older than any government. When someone in the community needs to build a house, pay school fees, bury a loved one, or start a business — the community gathers. Everyone contributes what they can. Some bring money. Some bring labour. Some bring food. Some bring presence. But nobody stands aside. Nobody says: that is not my problem. Because in a community built on Ubuntu, your problem is my problem. Your dream is connected to my dream. Your rising lifts me.

That is not weakness. That is genius.

As another proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

And Africa needs to go far.

There is an African proverb that says: “A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

Think about that…

A child who is not embraced by the village — will burn it down — to feel its warmth.

That is not a statement about destruction. That is a statement about hunger. About the most fundamental human need that exists — the need to be seen. To be accepted. To be told: you belong here. You matter. You have worth.

When that need is not met — when young people grow up feeling invisible, rejected, or told in a thousand quiet ways that they are less than — they do not simply accept it. They act out. They seek attention in painful ways. They make noise because silence felt like disappearing. They reach for things that harm them because nothing affirming was placed in their hands first.

The African came from a society that is collective, the European came from a society that is individualistic.

“Rain does not fall on one roof alone.” — Cameroonian Proverb

Meaning

No one lives completely alone. The things that affect one person eventually affect others as well. Joy spreads. Pain spreads. Success spreads. Problems spread.

This proverb reminds us that we are all connected. When one member of a community suffers, the entire community is weakened. When one person succeeds, everyone benefits.

Ubuntu teaches that our lives are woven together like threads in the same cloth.

“Umoja ni nguvu, utengano ni udhaifu.” — Swahili Proverb

Meaning

Unity is strength. Division is weakness.

Throughout history, powerful groups have often succeeded because they worked together. Likewise, communities have often failed because they allowed themselves to become divided.

Ubuntu reminds us that our greatest strength comes from cooperation rather than competition.

“A community is like a bundle of sticks.” — African Proverb

Meaning

One stick can be broken easily. A bundle of sticks is much harder to break.

Individuals may be vulnerable on their own, but together they become resilient.

Ubuntu teaches us that we protect one another through solidarity.

“A single tree cannot make a forest.” — African Proverb

Meaning

No matter how talented, intelligent, or hardworking a person may be, they cannot do everything alone.

Every great achievement depends on the contributions of many people.

Ubuntu teaches humility. It reminds us that we need one another.

“When spider webs unite, they can halt a lion.” — Ethiopian Proverb

Meaning

Individually, a spider web is fragile. A lion could tear through it without effort.

But when thousands of webs are woven together, they become surprisingly strong.

The lesson is that even people who seem weak individually can become powerful when they unite around a common purpose.

“A house built by many hands will never fall.” — African Proverb

Meaning

What is built collectively tends to be stronger than what is built alone.

Many hands bring different skills, perspectives, and strengths. Community creates stability.

Ubuntu teaches that lasting achievements are rarely individual achievements.

The central message of Ubuntu

You are important, but you are not separate.

Your success is connected to the success of others.

Your humanity is connected to the humanity of others.

Your story is part of a larger story.

And the strongest person is not the one who stands above everyone else, but the one who understands that “I am because we are.”

The Big Ubuntu Proverbs Lesson

We are connected (Rain does not fall on one roof alone.)
We become ourselves through others (A person is a person through other persons.)
Unity creates power (Umoja ni nguvu.)
Community protects us (A bundle of sticks cannot be easily broken.)
No one succeeds alone (A single tree cannot make a forest.)
Collective effort multiplies strength (Spider webs can halt a lion.)
What many hands build endures (A house built by many hands will never fall.)

And remember: “A lone tree cannot make a forest.”

A single tree in an open field is beautiful. But it is also vulnerable. The wind that the forest barely notices can uproot the lone tree completely. The forest survives not because its trees are individually more powerful — but because their roots intertwine underground, strengthening each other invisibly, sharing water and nutrients, holding the earth together against the storm.

That is what community does. That is what Ubuntu does. The roots intertwine where no one can see — and when the storm comes, we hold each other in place.

We need each other. We heal each other. We build each other.

Ubuntu means that your victory is my victory. When a student from this school becomes a doctor and returns to serve this community — that is not her victory alone. That is the victory of every teacher who stayed late. Every parent who sacrificed. Every classmate who encouraged. Every elder who prayed. Her success is the fruit of a tree that many hands planted.

The road taught me that no one makes it alone.

A stranger becomes a friend. A village becomes a classroom. A broken motorcycle becomes an invitation to grace. A border crossing becomes a reminder that the lines between us were drawn by someone else — and that underneath those lines, we are one people, healing the same wounds, dreaming the same dreams, building toward the same dawn.

Because you are not just building a life. You are building a bridge. A bridge between where you came from and where you are going. A bridge between the Africa of the past and the Africa of the future. A bridge between the elder who carried the knowledge and the child who needs to receive it. A bridge between your success and someone else’s possibility.

Build that bridge well. Build it strong. Build it wide enough for others to cross.

And Ubuntu means that your pain is not yours alone. When your brother is struggling — when your sister is drowning in silence — when the young man on the street corner has given up on himself — that is not a private problem. That is a community wound. And community wounds are healed by community care.

In the Acholi tradition of northern Uganda, there is a practice called gomo tong — the bending of the spear. When conflict tore through a community, when violence had created wounds between families and clans that seemed impossible to heal — the community gathered. Not to assign blame. Not to punish. But to restore. To bend the spear — the weapon of violence — into a new shape. To transform destruction into reconciliation. Because Ubuntu says: I cannot be fully well while you are broken. Your healing is part of my wholeness.

That is why community matters. That is why mentorship matters. That is why compassion matters.

Think about the mentors who shaped this continent’s greatest leaders. Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu — Sisulu who recognised something extraordinary in the young Mandela before Mandela recognised it in himself, who guided him, challenged him, and walked alongside him through decades of struggle. Patrice Lumumba and the community of Pan-African thinkers who sharpened each other’s vision. The young Wangari Maathai and the professors who refused to give up on her, who pushed her further than she thought she could go.

No giant stands alone. Every giant has someone — or many someones — who believed in them before the world did.

So be that person for someone. Be the Walter Sisulu in someone’s story. Be the grandmother at whose feet a future leader sits. Be the teacher who says — I see something in you that you cannot yet see in yourself.

As the elders say, “A child who is carried on the back sees more than the one who walks alone.” The child on the back sees further — not because they are taller, but because someone chose to carry them. Someone chose to elevate them. Someone said: you have not yet arrived at the point where you can walk this terrain alone, so let me carry you until you can. Let me lend you my height. Let me share my view.

That is mentorship. That is community. That is Ubuntu in action.

So freeing your mind means understanding all of this. It means looking at a map of Africa not through the eyes of 1884, but through the eyes of thousands of years of African civilisation. Kwame Nkrumah said: “I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.” Julius Nyerere said: “The development of Africa demands the unity of Africa.” And the ancient Egyptians — your ancestors of Kemet — built their entire civilisation around a concept called Ma’at. Truth. Justice. Balance. Harmony. Not for one person. Not for one tribe. For all.

That is the Africa we are reclaiming.

Remember Who We Were

One of the greatest mistakes made about Africa was the belief that the continent needed to be divided into artificial nation-states. These borders were not created by Africans. They were drawn by outsiders during the late nineteenth century, often with little regard for the people who already lived there.

Before 1884, there were no straight lines across Africa. No artificial borders cutting through villages and families and cultures. There were kingdoms and trade routes and migrations and people who had lived together, built together, and loved each other across this continent for thousands of years. Then fourteen European nations sat in a room in Berlin — not one African in the room, not one — and divided an entire continent between themselves. Forty countries drawn in a few months. Lines that cut through the Maasai, the Ewe, the Bakongo, the Somali, the Tuareg, the Himba — splitting families and cultures and identities with a cartographer’s pen.

And then the most cunning part: they made us fight each other over the borders they drew. Because a divided Africa cannot challenge the powers that divided it. Every time an African nation goes to war with its neighbour over a border dispute — that is a foreign pen still drawing blood. Every time we say I am Kenyan, not Tanzanian as though those borders define us — we are reciting lines that were never ours.

We were always one people. They simply convinced us we were many.

The purpose was simple: divide and control.

Yet the traditional African way was very different. Africans flourished in what we might call territorial states and empires—large political communities where many ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and religions lived side by side. People traded together, learned from one another, married across communities, and built civilizations that lasted for centuries.

Our history was never the history of isolation. It was the history of connection.

The inter-relationship of family, clan and village. There was no African individual as such, like what it is today were you can say I am an individual doing my thing. You couldn’t find that type of individual. The African society was made in such a way that they couldn’t find single people living by themselves. All people were attached to the family. Example if a woman became a widow, she either went back to her own family or to her husband’s family. Everyone was somehow attached to someone in the family tree structure. Therefore, most of African society started in communal basis. One was related to his or her immediate family, then to the clan, then to the village, then to the state. So that each individual had a combination of families one was attached to. That’s why there was not much of recorded history of disciplinary cases with children because everyone was accountable to a certain member within the family hierarchy. In these societies there was no word for jail as because no one had ever gone to one. No word for orphanage because no one had ever thrown out any children. No word for old peoples’ homes because no one had ever thrown out grandpa and grandma. The family structure bases on this values – there was no word for prostitution because the idea was unthinkable – when you look at the structure of the family – when the lady is not married at a certain age – two families got together to see what can be done about it. And they found a suitable man for her if she couldn’t find for herself. Mention the Mansa Musa trip to Macca for Hajj Pilgrimage. This was before the invention of the romantic love in marriage. When we adopted the western idea of romantic love – that’s when trouble started because the African marriage was based on respect and bringing families together and sometimes bringing villages together…..And it was with this kind of family structure and continuity that was the basis for the great civilisation of ancient Africa. When Africans started imitating the western family system, it destroyed the centralisation of the African family and the strength of the African culture, traditions, values and the downfall of mighty empires and civilisations.

Dynastic marriages – it used to be the case that when our ancestors found partners, they would do so according to fairly pragmatic considerations. Couples were formed not by the individuals themselves but by the wider society, families, elders and the village court. They were dynastic marriages. Marriage served as a tool to preserve, strengthen, and stabilize a family line also marriage was used to strengthen alliances, protect lineage continuity, settle old debts, and maintain social harmony. Elders acted almost like “family diplomats,” and marriage decisions were rarely left to two young people alone — they were treated as decisions that affected the whole lineage. Couples got together for reasons that had nothing to do with emotional compatibility. There were a lot of tears, there was sadness, there was loneliness – it did not seem to matter because relationships were not individualistic and served a bigger goal.

Clan-to-clan alliances (not just kingdom-to-kingdom) – Marrying into that clan cemented the alliance at a household level.
Cross-village marriages to build trade and safety networks – A family in a farming village might seek a spouse from a village near a river, forest, or trade route — creating in-law ties that gave both families access to resources (fish, salt, grazing land) and safe passage when traveling.
Levirate marriage (widow inheritance) — like the Luo example
When a husband died, his widow could marry a brother or close male relative of the deceased. This wasn’t about romance — it kept the woman and her children within the family lineage, ensured the children were still raised and provided for by the same family line, and prevented the family’s wealth, land, or name from passing to outsiders
Sororate marriage
If a wife died or was infertile, her family might offer a sister to marry the husband instead — again, to preserve the alliance between the two families rather than dissolve it.
Marriage as debt or reciprocity settlement – In some communities, marriage was used to settle a debt of gratitude between families — for example, if one family had helped another during famine or conflict, a marriage years later could formally “repay” that bond and connect the families permanently.
Age-set and initiation-based matching – In societies with age-grade systems (like among the Maasai or Kikuyu), people who went through initiation together often married within networks tied to that same age-set, reinforcing loyalty among peers who would later lead the community together.

Romantic marriages- There was some momentous change that occurred after colonialization of Africa and the subsequent adoption of western customs into Africa’s way of life. It was a revolution in feeling that we now know as romanticism. And one of the central tenets of romanticism is that each individual should be left to decide on their partner by their own, by the movements of their own heart. They should be left to decide for themselves. It’s a beautiful idea, a very liberating idea, it should make a lot of sense. And we have been in this romantic age for the last century or so. And lets put if plainly – its been a disaster. We are not any happier now in a romantic culture than we were in a dynastic culture, where marriages were made for dynastic reasons. Why, because we have failed collectively to focus with enough intent on the difficulties the couples with have when they choose each other according to the movements of their heart. Love is described as a special feeling, not a set of ideas, not a sense of rationally observable principles, but a feeling. You must be guided by your feeling. Couples are guided by emotion rather than reason. Reason is the enemy of in the romantic worldview of truly happy relationships. I ask you my dear brothers and sisters – is it truly unromantic if we define romanticism as the pursuit of a workable relationship? Is it unromantic to talk about money? Is it unromantic to think long and hard about childhood patterns of psychological development? Is it anti-romantic to spend a lot of time thinking about families and friends and compatibility at that level?

To live in a romantic culture means to form a relationship by instinct, that everyone has a soulmate, that you will recognize your soulmate by a special flattery feeling. That you shouldn’t be asked to account for that feeling. You should simply go for it and elope or move in together and start having kids if that what’s seizes you.

A person’s life satisfaction is determined by up to around 70% by the quality of their personal relationships. An alien hearing that statistic, visiting planet earth would think – well clearly earthlings – given the enormous role of love, will be spending 70% of their money and 70% of their education time working out how on earth this business of love works. But instead will leave it to chance because we live in a romantic culture.

Cause-and-effect of Romanticism

Individual feeling replaces collective decision-making → weakens the habit of subordinating personal preference to group goals, which Pan-Africanism depends on.
Marriage no longer serves alliance-building → cross-clan, cross-village, and trade/safety ties that marriage used to create stop forming.
Romanticism imported alongside colonization → retaining it means retaining a colonial-era import rather than reclaiming indigenous systems.
Elders displaced as “family diplomats” → weakens the institution that transmitted collective memory and intergroup cohesion across generations.
Family-level instability from unhappy romantic pairings → ripples outward to weaken the basic social unit any larger political project needs.
Marriage held together by feeling alone, with no external scaffolding → feeling fades, scaffolding was never there, so divorce rates rise.
Parenting individualized instead of kin-supported → when the romantic bond breaks, no extended-family safety net catches the child, producing single parenthood.
Fractured households and weaker elder guidance → economic strain and less consistent intergenerational value transmission to youth.
Feeling as sole justification for entering a relationship → feeling also becomes sole justification for leaving one or breaking its norms, since accountability to reason/family/community was rejected from the start.

Consider the great African civilizations that rose and flourished long before colonial borders existed because of the African family structure.

North and Northeast Africa

Ancient Egypt (Kemet) — c. 3100 BC – 30 BC
- One of the world’s oldest civilizations, famous for its pyramids, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and written language.
Kingdom of Kush (Nubia) — c. 1070 BC – 350 AD
- Located in present-day Sudan. Kushite rulers conquered Egypt and established Egypt’s Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. They also built more pyramids than Egypt itself.
Carthaginian Civilization — c. 814 BC – 146 BC
- Based in present-day Tunisia, Carthage became one of the greatest trading and naval powers of the ancient world.
Aksum (Axum) Empire — c. 100 AD – 940 AD
- Centered in present-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Aksum was one of the most powerful kingdoms of its age and connected Africa to trade networks stretching into Arabia, India, and beyond.

West Africa

Ghana Empire (Wagadou) — c. 300 AD – 1200 AD
- A wealthy trading empire that controlled important gold and salt routes across West Africa.
Mali Empire — c. 1230 AD – 1600 AD
- Home of the legendary Mansa Musa. During its golden age, Timbuktu became one of the world’s leading centers of scholarship, learning, and commerce.
Songhai Empire — c. 1464 AD – 1591 AD
- One of the largest empires in African history, renowned for its military strength, administration, and educational institutions.
Benin Kingdom (Empire) — c. 1180 AD – 1897 AD
- Famous for its sophisticated government and extraordinary bronze sculptures that astonished European visitors.
Kingdom of Kongo — c. 1390 AD – 1914 AD
- A powerful Central African kingdom with advanced political institutions and extensive trade networks.

Southern Africa

Great Zimbabwe Civilization — c. 1100 AD – 1450 AD
- Builders of the magnificent stone city of Great Zimbabwe, one of Africa’s greatest architectural achievements.
Mutapa Empire — c. 1430 AD – 1760 AD
- Successor to Great Zimbabwe and a major regional power controlling trade and natural resources across Southern Africa.

When we study these civilizations, a pattern emerges. Africans were not strangers to diversity. We had already mastered the art of bringing different peoples together under common political systems. We did not need outsiders to teach us how to live with one another.

The tragedy is that the borders imposed upon Africa encouraged division where there had once been connection. They encouraged us to think of ourselves primarily as citizens of small states rather than members of a larger African family.

But Ubuntu reminds us of a deeper truth:

“A person is a person through other persons.”

Our future will not be built by walls. It will be built by bridges.

Our ancestors left us a powerful lesson. Egypt lasted for three thousand years. Kush endured for over a thousand years. Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Benin, Kongo, Aksum, Great Zimbabwe, and many others rose and flourished because people learned to live, trade, build, and dream together.

The challenge before our generation is not to invent unity. It is to remember it.

Because a river that forgets its source will dry up.

And Africa’s source was never division.

It was Ubuntu. It was community. It was shared destiny.

When we remember that truth, we do more than honour our past.

We begin to build our future.

Africa is not waiting for a saviour descending from somewhere else with answers forged somewhere else for problems they have never lived. Africa is waiting for you. The young woman in this room who decides today that her community deserves better healthcare — and becomes the doctor who provides it. The young man who decides that his children will know their history — and becomes the teacher, the writer, the storyteller who makes sure they do. The entrepreneur, the engineer, the artist, the activist, the farmer, the coder, the healer — all of you, choosing today to be fully, excellently, unapologetically yourselves.

As the proverb says, “The drumbeat changes, but the dance continues.”

The rhythm shifts. The world changes. Technology changes. Borders shift. Generations pass. But the dance — the ancient, irreplaceable dance of a people who know who they are, who love where they come from, and who refuse to stop building — that dance continues. It has survived slavery. It has survived colonialism. It has survived every attempt to make us forget. And it will continue — through you, because of you, as long as you choose to keep dancing.

So keep dancing. Keep building. Keep becoming.

The Story of the Long-Handled Spoons

An elder was once shown two rooms by a guide. In the first room, a group of people sat around a magnificent feast — mountains of food, rich and fragrant. But every person had been given a spoon with a handle so long that no matter how they twisted and stretched, they could not bring the food to their own mouth. And so they sat — hungry, frustrated, surrounded by abundance — each one growing thinner in the presence of plenty. The room was full of noise. Arguments. Accusations. Complaints. Nobody was eating.

In the second room, the same feast. The same impossibly long spoons. But something was different. Here, the room was warm. Laughter moved through it like a breeze. And every person was full — because every person was using their long spoon to feed the person sitting across from them. And that person was feeding them in return.

The elder turned to the guide and asked: “What is the difference between these two rooms?”

The guide said: “In the first room, they forgot Ubuntu. In the second room, they remembered & practiced it.”

This is not just a story about food. It is a story about every resource, every talent, every gift you have been given. Your spoon is long for a reason. It was designed to reach someone else. When you understand that — when you stop trying to feed only yourself — everybody eats.

You cannot feed yourself with a long-handled spoon. But you can always feed someone else. And they can feed you. That is the only way the feast works.

When communities unite in the thread of solidarity and mutual cooperation, the strength of the continent multiplies manifold. It is through this collective resolve that our people will touch ever-new heights of progress.

AS I PREPARE TO CLOSE…

Everyone is waiting for the perfect condition to start; they don’t realise getting started is the perfect condition.

“An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.”

Echoed in African wisdom traditions favouring action over speech. Africa does not need another generation that only talks about change. It needs a generation that becomes the change. Learning your history is important. Loving yourself is important. Believing in Ubuntu is important. But these ideas only matter if they shape how you live. Knowledge without action changes nothing. As many African elders would say, a person is not judged by what they promise to do but by what they actually do. Stop talking about the life you want. Start building.

Before I go — I want to leave you with three questions.

And I do not want you to answer them to me. I want you to answer them to yourself, honestly, in the quiet space inside you where nobody is watching and nobody is performing.

First question.

If everyone in this room copied your daily habits today — would Africa as a whole evolve or collapse?

Think about that. Not as a question of judgment. As a question of accountability. Because we are not isolated individuals making isolated choices. We are a community. And communities are shaped by the accumulated daily habits of the people inside them. Your morning. Your discipline. Your relationship with your phone. Your relationship with your books. Your relationship with your word — do you keep it? Your relationship with your time — do you honour it? If the whole room did what you do every day — where would we end up?

Second question.

If a version of you from five years ago walked in right now — would they be impressed or depressed?

Would that younger you look at where you are, what you have become, how you spend your time, what you are building — and feel proud? Or would they feel a quiet, heavy disappointment? Not because you have failed. But because you settled. Because you played small. Because you let the dream shrink to fit the fear.

You owe that younger version of yourself an honest answer.

And you owe the future version of yourself a better one.

Third question.

And this one — this one is the heaviest of all three.

I want you to imagine your obituary.

Not the one that will be written. The one that should be written — if you lived every single day between now and your last breath at the absolute fullness of who you are capable of being.

Write it in your mind right now.

The lives touched. The organisation built. The young person in Kigoma who found their direction because of something you chose to fund. The woman in Mtwara who finally told her story because you created the space for it. The community that did not descend into violence because someone — because you — decided that peace was worth investing in before the fire started.

Now — put that obituary down.

And pick up the one that is currently being written.

The one being written by your actual daily choices. Your actual priorities. The meetings you take and the ones you avoid. The risks you embrace and the ones you defer until next quarter, next year, next decade.

Are they the same obituary?

Or is there a gap?

Because that gap — that space between who you are living as today and who you are fully capable of becoming — that gap has a name.

It is called unlived life.

And unlived life does not disappear quietly. It accumulates. It becomes regret. It becomes the thing you cannot name but feel every time you are alone and honest with yourself at two in the morning.

I am not here today to add to your regret.

I am here to give you an opportunity to close the gap.

I have ridden through the dust and the rain of this continent.

I have sat with young men who had nothing — no job, no direction, no one who believed in them — and watched their eyes change when someone finally looked at them and said: your story matters.

I have sat with women who had been silenced for so long they had forgotten what their own voice sounded like — and watched them find it again, word by word, in a circle of people who refused to look away.

I have seen what happens when a human being is given permission to tell the truth about who they are and where they have been.

They stand taller.

They walk differently.

They begin to believe that what comes next can be different from what came before.

That is what My Younger Self Series does.

Not in a conference room. Not in a report. Not in a PowerPoint slide.

On the road. In the community. Face to face. Story to story. Life to life.

So here is what I know.

Africa does not lack resources. Africa does not lack intelligence. Africa does not lack courage.

What Africa sometimes lacks — is people who refuse to let the gap between their possible obituary and their actual one grow any wider.

Be that person.

Choose the obituary worth writing.

Final Closing

The story of Africa did not begin with slavery.

The story of Africa did not begin with colonialism.

The story of Africa did not begin with borders drawn by strangers.

Our story began with builders, thinkers, explorers, scholars, inventors, kings, queens, farmers, traders, and dreamers.

And now the next chapter is waiting to be written. Not by outsiders. Not by governments. Not by history books. By you.

So remember your worth. Pursue excellence. Live Ubuntu. And then, with courage, take the first step.

Because the secret of getting ahead is getting started. And the world is still waiting for Africa to remember just how great she truly is.

Believe deeply in your worth. Pursue excellence without apology. Remember Ubuntu — because you are because we are, and we are because you are.

The 9 Ubuntu Doctrines

Nine Daily Practices for Building Yourself and Building Africa

Ubuntu Doctrine 1: Know Yourself Before the World Defines You

Daily Commitment

I will intentionally learn my history, culture, language, traditions, and ancestry so that my identity is built on truth rather than on stereotypes or misinformation.

Practice

Study African history every week.
Learn your mother tongue.
Celebrate your African identity.
Reject every lie that diminishes your worth.
Teach younger people where they come from.

Question

“Am I living according to my own story or someone else’s?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 2: Protect Your Mind Like Your Greatest Treasure

Daily Commitment

I will carefully guard what I allow into my mind because every thought eventually becomes a habit, and every habit becomes my future.

Practice

Read more than you scroll.
Limit unnecessary social media.
Surround yourself with positive thinkers.
Think before accepting popular opinions.
Feed your mind with wisdom every day.

Question

“Is this strengthening my mind or weakening it?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 3: Master Your Time Before Time Masters You

Daily Commitment

I will treat every hour as an investment rather than something to waste.

Practice

Begin every day with purpose.
Replace distraction with learning.
Finish important work before entertainment.
Treat today like the championship final.
Build skills every single day.

Question

“Did I invest today or merely consume it?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 4: Pursue Excellence in Everything You Do

Daily Commitment

I will never settle for “good enough” when I am capable of becoming better.

Practice

Improve one small thing every day.
Accept honest criticism.
Repeat until the work becomes excellent.
Learn from mistakes instead of fearing them.
Finish every task with pride.

Question

“Did I give my very best today?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 5: Build Yourself Before You Try to Build the World

Daily Commitment

I will strengthen my character before chasing success.

Practice

Develop discipline.
Keep your promises.
Build healthy habits.
Take responsibility for your choices.
Become someone people can trust.

Question

“Am I becoming the person my future requires?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 6: Turn Knowledge into Service

Daily Commitment

Everything I learn must improve somebody else’s life.

Practice

Share your knowledge.
Mentor younger people.
Solve problems in your community.
Volunteer your skills.
Ask daily, “Who benefits because I exist?”

Question

“Who is better today because of me?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 7: Choose Community Over Individualism

Daily Commitment

I will build people instead of competing against them.

Practice

Encourage others.
Celebrate other people’s success.
Ask for help when needed.
Offer help without being asked.
Build strong friendships based on honesty.

Question

“Am I making my community stronger?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 8: Become a Bridge Between Generations

Daily Commitment

I will receive wisdom from my elders and pass it to those who come after me.

Practice

Listen to older people.
Record family stories.
Preserve African traditions.
Teach children their history.
Become a mentor.

Question

“What wisdom will survive because I lived?”

Ubuntu Doctrine 9: Leave Africa Better Than You Found It

Daily Commitment

My life must become a contribution, not merely a success story.

Practice

Solve local problems.
Build institutions.
Protect the environment.
Support African businesses.
Create opportunities for future generations.

Live by one simple question:

“If every African lived exactly as I live today, would Africa become stronger or weaker?”

If the answer is weaker—

change your habits.

If the answer is stronger—

keep building.

The Ubuntu Affirmation

I will know who I am before I decide where I am going.
I will protect my mind, because every future begins with a thought.
I will pursue excellence in every task, no matter how small.
I will honour my time as my greatest earthly resource.
I will remember that my worth cannot be given or taken away.
I will live Ubuntu, knowing that I become fully human through others.
I will use my gifts to serve my community.
I will choose unity over division and cooperation over selfishness.
I will leave behind a legacy that makes the next generation stronger than my own.

Once we find ourselves on the map of human geography, we have to tell our children – who they are. We must tell our children what their mission must be. And the kind of legacy they have to leave for the whole world but begin with themselves in the essential selfishness of survival – take care of yourself first then find that mirror and find who is staring back at you. And who’s staring back at you – use the word WE, WE are going to change the world. And if we gave the world the first humanity, we will give the world the next humanity. And as for getting ready for the job – we are ready to do it right now. Dr. John Henrik Clarke.

This is the story according to Ustadh Yusuf – what’s yours?

UstadhYusuf

My Dear Younger Self: Your Life’s Blueprint

“A people who have lost their stories have lost their road map.”

Chapter One: Believe Deeply in Your Worth

Chapter Two: Pursue Excellence

Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say here live a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Excellence is bringing your very best into every room, every task, and every opportunity life places before you.

Chapter Three: Remember Ubuntu

“Rain does not fall on one roof alone.” — Cameroonian Proverb

Meaning

“Umoja ni nguvu, utengano ni udhaifu.” — Swahili Proverb

Meaning

“A community is like a bundle of sticks.” — African Proverb

Meaning

“A single tree cannot make a forest.” — African Proverb

Meaning

“When spider webs unite, they can halt a lion.” — Ethiopian Proverb

Meaning

“A house built by many hands will never fall.” — African Proverb

Meaning

The central message of Ubuntu

The Big Ubuntu Proverbs Lesson

Remember Who We Were

North and Northeast Africa

West Africa

Southern Africa

“An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.”

Final Closing

Like this:

Related

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

"in pursuit of GREATNESS"

“A people who have lost their stories have lost their road map.”

Chapter One: Believe Deeply in Your Worth

Chapter Two: Pursue Excellence

Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say here live a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Excellence is bringing your very best into every room, every task, and every opportunity life places before you.

Chapter Three: Remember Ubuntu

“Rain does not fall on one roof alone.” — Cameroonian Proverb

Meaning

“Umoja ni nguvu, utengano ni udhaifu.” — Swahili Proverb

Meaning

“A community is like a bundle of sticks.” — African Proverb

Meaning

“A single tree cannot make a forest.” — African Proverb

Meaning

“When spider webs unite, they can halt a lion.” — Ethiopian Proverb

Meaning

“A house built by many hands will never fall.” — African Proverb

Meaning

The central message of Ubuntu

The Big Ubuntu Proverbs Lesson

Remember Who We Were

North and Northeast Africa

West Africa

Southern Africa

“An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.”

Final Closing

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

"in pursuit of GREATNESS"

Discover more from UstadhYusuf