Leadership: The tomorrow that youths were promised is today

Youth participate ina forum onthemed "Whose Future Is It Anyway? in Nairobi [File-Standard]

I am certain I am living in the future. For years, I heard the same line repeated in classrooms, church, political rallies, leadership conferences and even conversations among young people: “the youth are the leaders of tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. It was always tomorrow.

But standing in August 2026, I cannot help but wonder whether tomorrow finally arrived. We were expected to study, graduate, find jobs, settle down and perhaps, somewhere along the way, earn the privilege of being taken seriously. Leadership was something that seemed to belong to people older than us people with titles, political connections, years of experience and, sometimes, enough money to put their faces on posters.

But I am beginning to think tomorrow has arrived. And perhaps that is why this International Youth Day  felt different. As the world marked International Youth Day on August 12, a day established by the United Nations to draw attention to issues affecting young people and to recognise them as partners in shaping society, the conversations in Kenya cannot be separated from what has happened over the last two years.

It cannot be separated from June 2024 protests against the Finance Bill. It cannot be separated from the Constitution. And it certainly cannot be separated from the question of what young Kenyans intend to do with the space they are fighting so hard to occupy.

I write this not merely as a journalist observing a generation from the outside. I write this as part of it. I know what it means to be young and be given a leadership position, but I also know the difference between occupying a seat and actually having a voice.

I have been a student leader. I have sat in rooms where young people were expected to speak for others. I have represented students, participated in decision-making and learnt that leadership is not simply about having a title next to your name. It is about standing in a room and being willing to speak when it would be easier to remain silent.

Those experiences have shaped the way I look at what is happening among young Kenyans today. Because something has fundamentally changed.

For years, young people were encouraged to aspire to leadership while being kept at a distance from the actual decision-making. We were told we were important, our voices mattered, and we were the future. Article 55 requires the State to create opportunities for young people to associate, be represented and participate in political, social, economic and other spheres of life.

Article 38 goes even further, guaranteeing every adult citizen the right to participate in political choices, vote and stand as a candidate for public office. The problem, perhaps, was never that young people lacked a constitutional invitation. Then came June 2024. The Gen Z protests became a defining moment.

Young Kenyans took to the streets to reject the Finance Bill, but the conversation quickly became bigger than taxation. It became a conversation about governance, accountability, public spending, leadership and the kind of country young people wanted to inherit or perhaps, more accurately, the kind of country they wanted to help build themselves.

What struck me most was not simply the numbers. It was the independence. This was a generation that did not wait for a political party to call a rally. It did not need an established politician to tell it where to stand. It did not need an old political structure to give it a spokesperson. The phone became the meeting place. The timeline became the noticeboard. Social media became the mobilisation tool.

And young people who had previously been dismissed as politically apathetic suddenly found themselves at the centre of Kenya's national conversation. For once, the question was not “Where are the young people?” but “Why? They were everywhere.

And then something even more interesting happened. They did not disappear when the protests ended. The energy simply began taking different forms. Some continued activism.

Others became more interested in voter registration. Others began talking about governance at the county level. Others started considering elective positions. Young Kenyans who had spent years complaining about political leadership began asking a much more uncomfortable question: What if we became the leaders, we keep asking for That, to me, is where the youth story becomes much bigger than June 2024. Because protesting against power is one thing. Deciding that you want to occupy the spaces where power is exercised is another. And we are beginning to see young people seriously consider that possibility.

The conversation is shifting from "Why are they doing this to us?" to "What can we do about it?" The Constitution already gives adults the right to seek elective office. But for a long time, many young Kenyans have viewed elective politics as something distant, something reserved for people with deep pockets, political families or established networks.

That perception appears to be changing. And perhaps the next election will tell us just how much.

The IEBC has scheduled the next General Election for 10 August 2027, meaning that as we marked International Youth Day, we are less than a year away from another major test of Kenya's democracy. That is not simply a countdown to another election.

For young Kenyans, it could become a test of whether the political awakening witnessed in 2024 can translate into sustained participation. The past two years have also brought fear.

Young activists have faced arrests, intimidation and abductions. The price of speaking loudly has, for some, been extraordinarily high. That reality should make us pause.

Because what does it say about a country when the generation being celebrated on International Youth Day is also a generation that sometimes feels unsafe exercising the very freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution?

The Constitution promises freedom of expression, political participation and the right to participate in governance.

Young people are testing those promises. And that test is not always comfortable for those who hold power. Even though these leaders try to intimidate the young ones, they have not succumbed to it.

Instead, they are motivated and have put their names forward to lead. So perhaps the question is no longer whether young people are ready to lead. Perhaps the question is whether Kenya is ready to let them.