A few weeks ago I attended an international leadership conference that brought together young activists and women’s rights advocates from across the globe.
The stories I heard were both inspiring and devastating; tales of resilience in the face of systemic oppression, of hope battling against relentless exploitation.
A young woman from a certain African country described how people from her village had been violently evicted to make way for a diamond mine. The promises of jobs and development never materialised.
Instead, the land was left scarred, the people displaced, and the profits siphoned off by a handful of politically-connected elites. A South African activist spoke of watching his peers, educated and ambitious, slowly lose hope as unemployment crushed their dreams.
These conversations revealed a fundamental truth: Africa’s poverty is not natural, it is engineered. Our leaders have systematically failed us, not through incompetence, but through deliberate greed and betrayal. Nowhere is this more evident than in Zimbabwe, a nation that should be prosperous, but instead, serves as a case study in kleptocracy.
Africa is not poor, it is being looted. The continent holds 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, including diamonds, gold, and cobalt, along with vast oil deposits and some of the most fertile agricultural land on earth.
Yet, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the continent loses over US$200 billion annually to illicit financial flows, more than it receives in aid and foreign investment combined. This theft is not accidental. It is enabled by a global financial system that allows corrupt leaders to hide stolen wealth in offshore accounts, and by multinational corporations that exploit weak governance to extract resources without fair compensation.
The result? Hospitals without medicine, schools without books, and a generation of young Africans watching their futures slip away. Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 70% of sub Saharan Africa under 30. Yet political power remains firmly in the hands of aging elites who refuse to relinquish control. The average age of African leaders is 62, while the median age of their citizens is 19.
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This generational disconnect has devastating consequences. Policies are made by leaders who have no stake in the future, while youth unemployment rates soar above 30% in most southern African countries. The message to young Africans is clear: your labour is wanted, but your voice is not.
In 2006, the discovery of the Marange diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe should have been transformative. Estimates suggested the deposits could generate US$2 billion annually, enough to rebuild infrastructure, fund education, and lift millions out of poverty.
Instead, what followed was one of the most brazen resource heists in modern African history. Zimbabwean soldiers launched Operation Hakudzokwi (Operation No Return), killing hundreds of small scale miners and violently displacing thousands more. Human rights groups documented mass graves, torture, and systematic rape as the military seized control of the diamond fields. Rather than benefiting the people, the diamonds were funnelled through shell companies linked to Zimbabwe’s political and military elite.
A 2012 investigation revealed that US$2 billion in diamond revenue had simply vanished, enough to cover Zimbabwe’s entire health budget for 16 years. Today, the Marange region remains one of the poorest in Zimbabwe. Schools lack basic supplies, clinics have no medicine, and young people, denied formal employment, risk their lives in dangerous, illegal mining pits.
The late former president Robert Mugabe’s much-touted land redistribution programme, which began in 2000, was supposed to empower black Zimbabweans. Instead, most of the redistributed land went to political cronies, while rural women, who do 70% of Africa’s farming, were left landless and impoverished.
The women’s movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise became a symbol of resistance, organising peaceful protests against economic collapse. The response? Mass arrests, beatings, and sexual violence by state security forces.
While Zimbabwe’s social safety nets have collapsed entirely, other southern African nations show varying degrees of effort, and failure. South Africa has one of the most extensive social grant systems in Africa, reaching 18 million people. But with youth unemployment at 46,5%, these grants are a band aid on a bullet wound.
Botswana’s universal pensions and free education are commendable, but 25% of youth remain unemployed, trapped in an economy still dependent on diamond exports. Food for work programmes fail to reach conflict zones, where 90% of the population lives on less than US$2 a day.
None of these systems address the root causes of poverty: Inequality and corruption.
To reclaim Africa’s future, a radical reimagining of governance and resource sovereignty must take root, one that dismantles systemic theft and centres the continent’s marginalised voices. This begins by transforming extractive industries into engines of collective prosperity through nationalisation paired with grassroots democratisation, where mining sectors operate under community led oversight boards to ensure profits uplift local populations rather than foreign shareholders or corrupt elites.
Parallel to this economic reckoning, the establishment of an African Anti-Kleptocracy Court, empowered to prosecute cross-border financial crimes and reclaim stolen assets, would signal a continental commitment to justice, targeting not only individual looters, but the global networks enabling their plunder.
True liberation, however, demands more than structural overhauls; it requires dismantling hierarchies of exclusion. Institutionalising 50% representation for women and youth across all government bodies would rupture the stranglehold on power, injecting policymaking with the urgency of those who must live with its consequences.
This shift must extend to agrarian justice, where land redistribution programmes prioritise women farmers, the backbone of Africa’s food systems, granting them legal title and access to technologies that amplify their generational wisdom.
To break the cycle of survival mode existence, universal basic income funded by windfall taxes on mineral wealth could provide a dignified floor for all citizens, while massive investments in climate resilient industries, from solar farms to regenerative agriculture, would transform ecological challenges into engines of youth employment.
None of this can flourish under the weight of illegitimate debts accrued by kleptocrats; a continent wide audit must void these fraudulent obligations, coupled with a militant campaign to repatriate the US$500 billion stashed in offshore vaults, a down payment on reparations for decades of organised looting.
Only through such tectonic shifts can Africa’s stolen breath be reclaimed. The young activists I met at that conference are not waiting for change, they are making it.
From Zimbabwe’s protest movements to South Africa’s #FeesMustFall campaign, a new generation is rising to demand what should never have been taken: their future, their resources, and their dignity.
“While we do our good works, let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary,” writes Chinua Achebe, in a clarion call for Africa’s reckoning.
The continent’s rebirth demands dismantling systems of extraction and erecting frameworks of restorative justice, unyielding accountability, and leadership that cultivates sovereignty rather than loots it.
The time for that Africa is now. Until then, let us keep spreading positivity (#spreadpositivity). We were here, becoming better, making our mark, and leaving our footprint as we make the world a better place!
- Chirenje writes in her capacity as a citizen of Zimbabwe. Follow her on social media for more Lifezone with Grace conversations on Twitter: @graceruvimbo; Facebook: Grace Ruvimbo Chirenje; Instagram: @graceruvimbo; WhatsApp:+263772719650.
