African Parenting Bootcamp: Scripting the Future of Africa
Dateline - 30th October 2045
Your grandchild stands in a circle of young, brilliant minds—Chinese, Jewish, and Arab peers—each sharing the stories of their ancestry, tales of greatness etched into the heart of their heritage. As it becomes his turn, a question hangs heavy in the air:
What story does your grandchild have to share?
Join the African Parenting BootcampConsider the wars raging across the globe—Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Lebanon—and how countless lives are sacrificed for what people hold sacred. As I explored the different versions of these histories, I saw the fierce pride in their lineage, the legends carved into their souls, and a willingness to lay down their lives to preserve it.
Then a question struck me: What would our children be willing to die for?
As I searched for an answer, my thoughts drifted to one of the cases I handled a few months ago here in America of a teenager who had lost himself to drug addiction. His path to recovery didn’t begin with detox; it began with reconnection. When he discovered his lineage, the great men who came before him—his great-great-grandfather, an icon; his great-grandfather, a pioneer; his grandfather, a visionary; and his father, a trailblazer in fintech—something stirred within him.
I asked him to write his story as it stood—a story of addiction—and imagine his future child reading it alongside the legends of his lineage.
How did his tale fit into the legacy of his ancestors? What would his child say about him? He told me that moment was what snapped him back to his senses and today he is totally clean.
The game has changed, my people. Recolonization is no longer through chains and shackles, but through stories and systems. Cultures around us are curating their narratives with precision, building structures that reinforce their identities and secure their futures. But what of us?
The truth is, our children will not have the luxury of ignorance that our parents had. In every misstep, there lies a forgotten history, a fractured identity. Our children stray when they forget who they are, or worse, never learn.
The African identity must be curated with purpose. We must build systems so that our children are not merely told of their heritage but are inspired to carry the torch, to run their leg in the relay race of family greatness. It is time to rise as a new generation of ancestors, to instill clarity and purpose into the hearts of our descendants. For if we fail, we leave them vulnerable to forces that seek to colonize their minds and redefine their values. We have started teaching many African families on how to kickstart the journey and it has been my pleasure to have guided a number of families in the last few months.
Will you rise and build a future worthy of our lineage, or will you let your children be colonized by values you’d never choose for them?
