Just when I am talking and writing about mentoring the next generation President Obama is hosting 500 young people from Africa who are going through a leadership program in the United States. How good for the young people. I am sure it will be an experience of a lifetime. How sad for us as a people. While we are playing politics with every single thing, while we are building our empires and while we are majoring on minors and minoring on majors the next generation is being shaped right under our nose. The future is being shaped alright but not by us. Well, in a way maybe it’s a good thing. If they were left to us they will be very well shaped in accusations and counter accusations, in division and divisive techniques, in service to self above Nation among other things. The greatest gift we can give to the future is to prepare for it by inspiring and instructing its leaders aright. 

Generational failure is when children born to a generation have to fight the same battles that their fathers fought. When I was young, what were the issues my father’s generation had to fight when they were in government? They had to deal with power supply, they had to deal with roads, they had to deal with tribalism and they had to contend with politics being a distraction to governance rather than being a vehicle for governance. What do we have to deal with today across the continent? The exact same things. This leaves us with a very scary conclusion. The generation of my father’s father (Born in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s) which is the generation that fought for independence succeeded in their generational purpose. 

They got independence. The generation of my father (Born in the 1930’s and 1940’s) – the generation whose generational purpose was to build on the gains of independence and take us into the promised land of prosperity as a continent have failed us. The result is that our generation has to carryover their failure. We are the generation that should have taken the continent into the age of discoveries, inventions and thought leadership and adventures but we are not able to move because we are simply repeating the cycle of our fathers. 

We are living in an environment created by the failure of the fathers. However, the fact that one generation failed does not mean that we inherit their failure. In fact, while generational failure is when we have to fight those battles, the problem comes to our generation when we choose not to see beyond what the fathers saw. A dear friend of mine defined civilization as the art of living up to the resources of our time. Let us take just

 one aspect of the resources of our time – Information and communication. More than ever before we can communicate with speed and precision. We can reach many people at the touch of a button. While these resources could have been used to build a united continent, build thought leaders and used as instrument of mentoring, we use them as instruments of division to continue to fight battles we never started. This gets me scared because when I look at the resources of our time, there is no reason why we should fight the battles of our fathers unless of course we are faced with a very chilling reality that we are the most uncivilized generation of Africans. 

Our forefathers were civilized because they used their spears as best as could be used in their time. Are we on the way to becoming another failed generation that will not execute its generational purpose? When growth outside us is faster than the changes going on within us then progress cannot take place. When our thinking is frozen in the philosophies of our fathers then we cannot maximize the resources of our time because we cannot operate a digital era with analogue thinking. And, the reality is that if we continue like this, then the next generation of African leaders some of whom are now being mentored in America will have their loyalties well spelt out. The future belongs to those who mentor the present. - 

-Article adopted from a Kenyan local daily.

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