Speech by Emmanuel Achapah

Speech by: Emmanuel Achapah

Occasion: Second AYDEC Kenya Executive Meeting

Date: 4th May, 2019

The President (Madam Esther Neema), the Vice President (Mr. Abdul Malick), every single member of the executive committee; it’s an absolute pleasure to behold the commitment that fills this space now.

As a spokesperson for this forming organization, my voice ought not to be my own. At all times, as much as possible, my responsibility is to sound your voices and collective intents. This is just the second meeting so far and as we seek harmony, allow me to speak to self-perceived vision of this organization.

This is the biggest voluntary meeting I have seen in a long time and that is appointer to the level of commitment that you bring a long. It might also mean that the need for transformation by the young people for Africa weighs on every heart here. Whenever the time is right for any kind of transformative work, the idea rests with a multitude, but the real change comes by individuals, often few, who are willing to plan time and resources into action.

A gentleman called Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One talks about the challenge of the future and notes, “in the slightest sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come. But what makes the future distinctive and important isn’t that it hasn’t happened yet, but rather that it will be a time when the world looks different from today. In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.

If things change radically in the next decade, then the future is nearly at hand.

No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: 1. It’s going to be different and 2. It must be rooted in todays’ world”

We live in Africa and the perpetual circumstance of a future deferred in existential. Yesterday, we were younger and we were most eligible for leadership today. Matter of factly, we were told from every corner that we were the “leaders of tomorrow”. That was meant to be the future we expected but while we clung to that hope, we never acted on creating the future that we wanted.

Tomorrow will always demand of todays’ actions.

And so here is my rallying question; HOW badly do we want the Africa’s dominating future and WHEN do we want it to come?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to changing the future."