Africa's youth demand capital and ownership at UNISA summit
Young leaders argue economic ownership, not just participation, is the key to Africa's demographic dividend
Africa’s demographic dividend is fast becoming the continent’s central investment question, and at the 50th Anniversary of June 16 Summit hosted by the University of South Africa (UNISA) in collaboration with the Abdou Samb Foundation, young African leaders argued that the capital, ownership and decision-making power needed to unlock it remain firmly out of their hands.
The economic stakes are considerable. Africa is the youngest continent on earth, with more than 60% of its population under the age of 25, and by 2050 projections suggest one in every four people on the planet will be African. Yet the forum heard that the generation set to inherit and build that future remains systematically underrepresented in governance, economic ownership and diplomatic processes. The summit, framed around the Abdou Samb Foundation’s vision of youth as a “seventh region” of the African Union, not a geographic territory but a demographic and intellectual force that transcends borders, examined whether Africa’s youth are being genuinely empowered or merely accommodated by the institutions that shape their futures.
Moderator Rutendo Chikowore, who opened the forum, pressed participants to move beyond inspirational rhetoric and toward concrete participation in economic decision-making. “Young people cannot simply be leaders of tomorrow,” she said, invoking the late Nelson Mandela’s famous dictum only to complicate it. “They must be leaders of today. They must be included in meetings where policies are adopted, where investments are made, where solutions are designed, and where the future of our continent is being shaped.” For investors and policymakers, her framing carried a clear signal: youth participation is a strategic allocation rather than a social gesture. “If Africa’s greatest resource is not the one beneath its soil, but the one on its feet,” she told delegates, “then investing in young people is not an act of charity, it is an act of strategy.”
The sharpest intervention on ownership came from Mpho Maralane, a representative of the South African BRICS Youth Association (SABYA), who argued that youth inclusion cannot be separated from a reckoning with colonial history and its structural legacy in the economy. “My key stance when it comes to these topics always is understanding your problems,” she said. “And I don’t think there is a way in which we as youth can be included or involved in any forum without understanding our problem paradigm.”
Maralane rejected the idea that apartheid’s formal end had resolved the underlying architecture of economic exclusion. “Before apartheid, which happened for a very short period of time, less than 50 years, we had a solid 400 years of colonialism before that, which introduced formal structures of governance, Western structures of governance in Africa.” That architecture, she argued, persists in South Africa’s post-1994 economic realities. “During apartheid, white people owned the majority of the economy and the means of production. In a post-apartheid environment, that is still the case. What we do have is more young people, more black people involved in the day-to-day activities of the economy, but we still do not own the means of production.”
Her distinction between presence and power cut to the core of the forum’s concerns, and to the economics of participation. “We still have policies that will gatekeep your inclusion. We still have political frameworks that will gatekeep your participation. It will keep you as an active person who is in the room, but you will never be able to be the person who makes the decisions in that room until we understand our problems.” For market-watchers, the point translates into a question of who captures returns: young Africans may operate within the economy, but ownership of productive assets, and the profits that flow from them, remains elsewhere.
Meanwhile, a separate thread of the discussion examined how institutions such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) might create structural pathways for youth-led economic participation across borders, or fail to do so if the underlying power dynamics are left unaddressed. The forum also heard a speaker invoke the late philosopher Steve Biko, emphasising that African intellectual traditions must be centred in educational and institutional frameworks. “We should not ever just disregard our own thinkers within the African continent,” the moderator noted. “We should have our own African thinkers at the forefront of our institutional learning programs.”
The panel’s recommendations, still being consolidated at the time of publication, are expected to call on governments to move beyond symbolic youth representation toward meaningful policy participation, on the private sector to invest in youth-led enterprise, and on educational institutions to equip young people with tools fit for rapidly evolving economies rather than the inherited frameworks of a colonial past. Further coverage of the summit is available at https://pretorianews.co.za/news/politics/2026-06-17-young-african-leaders-demand-real-power-and-economic-ownership-at-unisa-summit/ and the debate it captures is likely to shape how capital, policy and institutions respond to a generation demanding ownership rather than accommodation.
Q&A
What economic stakes did the summit highlight for Africa's youth?
Africa is the youngest continent, with more than 60% of its population under 25, and projections suggest one in four people on the planet will be African by 2050. Yet the generation set to build that future remains underrepresented in governance, economic ownership and diplomatic processes.
What was Mpho Maralane's argument about ownership of the economy?
She argued that although apartheid has formally ended, white people still own the majority of the economy and the means of production in post-apartheid South Africa. More young and black people are involved in day-to-day economic activity, but they do not own productive assets or the profits that flow from them.
How did moderator Rutendo Chikowore frame investment in young people?
She said investing in young people is not an act of charity but an act of strategy, arguing that Africa's greatest resource is its people rather than what lies beneath its soil, and that youth must be included where policies are adopted and investments are made.
What role was suggested for the AfCFTA?
The discussion examined how the African Continental Free Trade Area might create structural pathways for youth-led economic participation across borders, but warned it could fail to do so if underlying power dynamics are left unaddressed.