History does not remember those who stood silently in moments of crisis. It does not honour the passive, nor immortalize the hesitant. It remembers the bold, those who rose when the odds were against them, who claimed spaces not gifted but seized.
Today, as we mark International Youth Day, I write not with the language of polite commemoration, but with the urgency of one who knows that our generation is running out of time. The youth of Uganda, of Africa, of the world, are no longer an abstract “future”; we are the most critical force in the present. We are not the inheritors of a world shaped by others; we are the architects of the one that must emerge from the debris of failed systems.
Our Constitution is clear. Article 38 of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda grants every citizen, including the youth, the right to participate in the affairs of government. This right is not ornamental; it is binding. The African Youth Charter’s Article 11 demands that States Parties ensure youth participation in all aspects of society.
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 2250 recognizes youth as equal partners in governance, peace-building, and development. Yet what we have witnessed is a profound betrayal of these commitments. Youth councils, established under the Local Government Act, have been reduced to political accessories. Their budgets are paltry, their independence compromised, their mandates diluted by interference from those they are meant to check. Instead of platforms for independent youth voice, they are often converted into extensions of the ruling party machinery.
This is not youth empowerment; it is youth containment.
Uganda’s youth unemployment remains a national scandal. While UBOS estimates the rate at 13%, this number is deceptive. Underemployment, the plague of working below one’s potential for a pittance, is the unspoken tragedy.
Every year, over 400,000 young Ugandans graduate into a job market that produces fewer than 90,000 jobs. The arithmetic is ruthless: more than three-quarters are left stranded. This is not an accident.
It is the result of policy inertia, where industrialization remains a slogan rather than a strategy, and where agriculture — our economic backbone — is left vulnerable to climate shocks without adequate modernization. In a country where 78% of the population is under 30, such neglect is not just poor governance; it is a crime against demographic destiny.
The climate crisis is no longer a theory in textbooks. Karamoja’s droughts have left thousands hungry; Kasese’s floods have displaced entire communities. Lake Victoria’s fisheries, once a source of livelihood for countless youth, are shrinking at alarming rates. The Paris Agreement, to which Uganda is a signatory, commits us to limit warming to 1.5°C, yet our domestic environmental enforcement remains lethargic.
This is intergenerational theft, the plundering of resources and the degradation of ecosystems that the youth will inherit. Environmental stewardship is not a luxury; it is survival. We, the youth, must become litigators of our own future, taking to the courts, the streets, and the policy chambers to demand accountability for climate inaction.
The digital revolution is our inheritance. Social media has allowed the youth to bypass traditional gatekeepers of information, mobilizing faster than any generation before. But the state has learned to fear these tools and to control them. The Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act of 2022, with its vague provisions criminalizing “offensive communication,” is a legislative muzzle designed to intimidate outspoken youth voices.
We cannot allow our digital public squares to be policed into irrelevance. The same energy that powered the Arab Spring, #EndSARS, and #FridaysForFuture must fuel a Ugandan and African wave of unapologetic truth-telling. Our tweets must become manifestos; our hashtags, policy demands.
In a rigged economic order, youth entrepreneurship is an act of resistance. The African Continental Free Trade Area offers a market of 1.3 billion people and a vast economic horizon. But our ability to exploit it is stifled by a lack of capital, inadequate infrastructure, and predatory loan conditions that keep young innovators in debt traps.
We must push for youth quotas in government procurement, dedicated venture capital funds, and tax incentives for youth-led enterprises. Economic independence is the foundation of political independence. A generation that owns capital cannot be patronized into silence.
Our education system is misaligned with our needs. It remains trapped in colonial-era models designed to produce clerks for foreign administrations, not innovators for local transformation. Graduates emerge with degrees but without practical skills, civic literacy, or entrepreneurial capability. Article 10 of the African Youth Charter insists on relevant and quality education. Yet relevance is absent when curricula ignore climate literacy, digital skills, and critical thinking.
The result? A workforce prepared for jobs that do not exist, while real opportunities in technology, renewable energy, and agribusiness go untapped.
“Wait your turn” is the most insidious political deception of our time. It is a strategy to pacify the majority until they are too old, too disillusioned, or too compromised to change anything. The Constitution sets a minimum age of 18 for voting, 35 for the presidency, but nowhere does it say that the youth must be ornamental in governance. We must dismantle the structures, both legal and cultural, that lock out young leaders.
This means demanding proportional youth representation in Parliament, ministerial positions, and all decision-making bodies. Tokenism will no longer suffice; we seek power with mandate, not titles without teeth.
The youth-led protests in Sudan that ousted Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The Senegalese youth movement Y’en a Marre which redefined political discourse. The global climate strikes were mobilized by teenagers.
These are not anomalies; they are blueprints. When youth organize, they destabilize entrenched systems. When they sustain their mobilization, they redefine the state itself.
International Youth Day is not a festival; it is a checkpoint. It is a moment to measure how far we have moved from the sidelines and how close we are to the front-lines. The truth is, without deliberate action, the systems that marginalize us will outlive us, and history will remember us as the generation that had the numbers but lacked the nerve.
Our task is clear: use the law to defend our rights; use numbers to demand representation; use technology to out-communicate repression; use economic innovation to weaken dependency; use environmental activism to secure the planet we will inherit.
We are the architects of tomorrow, but architecture requires building, and building requires boldness. The time to claim power is not in some mythical future. The time is now. History will not remember our hashtags. It will remember whether we were present when our time came. And that time, fellow youth, has already arrived.
By; Atwemereireho Alex – alexatweme@gmail.com
The writer is a lawyer, researcher and governance analyst