People often say African youth is the future of the continent. After years of watching and living the digital reality from Lomé, I think it is above all the present — a badly connected present, underestimated, but moving fast.
The gap is not the one people think
We talk about the digital divide as though it were a question of smartphones. It is not. In Lomé, most young people have a phone. The real gap is a gap in skills. Knowing how to use WhatsApp is not knowing how to build a website. Knowing how to scroll Instagram is not knowing how to build one.
The problem is not access to the tool. It is access to understanding the tool. And that understanding cannot be downloaded.
What young people already have
What I see among the young people around me — in the markets, in the neighbourhoods, on the campuses — is an ability to adapt that formal schooling does not measure. A fabric seller running his customer base on WhatsApp Business. A moto driver negotiating his rides in Telegram groups. A hairdresser filming her work to attract new clients.
It is informal entrepreneurship, but it is already innovation. The problem is that it stays invisible, because it fits into no recognised framework.
Three levers to accelerate
Technical education within reach. You do not need a prestigious school to learn to code, to photograph, or to run a project. The online resources exist. What is missing is structure: a mentor, a group, a concrete goal. Local communities of developers and creatives already do this work.
Visibility for local success. We celebrate startups raising millions, but we do not show the freelance developer in Bè living off client contracts, or the photographer in Kodjoviakopé equipping weddings. Those trajectories are more useful to a young person than a thousand motivational speeches.
Integrating digital into the real economy. Digital is not a sector apart, it is a skeleton key that adapts to every sector. Farming, health, trade, education. Impact is measured where digital touches daily life, not inside incubators.
What I see changing
Something is moving. Slowly, but it is moving. More young people are learning online. More small businesses are adopting mobile payment. More projects are appearing — not always spectacular, but real. African youth is not waiting to be trained. It is training itself, with whatever is at hand, improvising what nobody teaches it.
The question is no longer "is African youth ready for digital?". The question is: are we going to back it, or are we going to leave it improvising alone a while longer?