We often tell young people to make better choices – Choose the right career, Choose good friends, Choose the right partner, Stay in school, Avoid harmful relationships, Speak up when something is wrong, Build a good future.
The advice sounds simple. But we rarely stop to ask a more difficult question: Who is teaching them how to make those choices?
Young people are making some of the most consequential decisions of their lives at a time when they are still developing the confidence, judgment and emotional capacity to navigate them. Yet too often, we expect them to figure it out alone.
For many young women, this challenge can be even more complicated.
A girl’s education may be influenced by what her parents believe she should become. Her career choices may be shaped by expectations she has never been given the space to question.
Questions about relationships, sexuality and marriage may be treated as inappropriate rather than as matters requiring honest guidance.
At school, she may be struggling with experiences she does not know how to discuss.
She may encounter harassment or abuse and remain silent because she does not know whom to trust.
She may enter a relationship without understanding what healthy love looks like, only to discover much later that control or manipulation had been mistaken for affection.
And when things go wrong, society may ask: “Why did she make that choice?”
Perhaps we should ask a different question first: “What did we give her to help her make it?”
THE PROBLEM IS BIGGER THAN INDIVIDUAL CHOICES
We have become comfortable talking about personal responsibility.
Young people must be disciplined. They must be ambitious. They must make wise decisions. They must protect themselves. All of that is true.
But individual responsibility cannot be separated from the environment in which decisions are made.
Good judgment does not simply appear with age. It develops through experience, guidance, reflection, conversation and access to people who can help us think.
A young person may know that education matters but still have no idea how to choose a career. They may know that abusive relationships are harmful but not recognise manipulation when they encounter it. They may know they should speak up but fear what will happen if they do.
They may want to make independent decisions but have been raised in environments where questioning authority is interpreted as disrespect.
This is why telling young people to “make better choices” is not enough. We have to teach them how to make choices.
THE FAMILY IS THE FIRST INSTITUTION
This work begins at home. The family is a child’s first institution of learning – not simply about academics, but about trust, relationships, boundaries, responsibility and decision-making.
Yet many families are better at giving instructions than developing judgment.
A child is told what career to pursue because it is considered respectable. A daughter is told whom she should marry because the family believes it knows what is best.
Questions about sex and relationships are avoided because they are uncomfortable. Failure is treated as shameful rather than as an opportunity to learn.
Obedience can sometimes be valued more than thoughtful independence. Parents have a responsibility to guide their children.
But guidance is not the same as control. There is a difference between telling a young person what to do and teaching them how to think about what they should do.
The latter requires conversation. It requires listening. And sometimes it requires parents to accept that the child they are raising will eventually have to make decisions they cannot make on their behalf.
SCHOOLS MUST TEACH MORE THAN ACADEMICS
Education is another part of the equation. We rightly want schools to produce students who can read, calculate, analyse and compete.
But young people also need to learn how to navigate life. They need spaces where they can ask difficult questions without immediately being judged.
They need to understand boundaries, healthy relationships, conflict, personal responsibility and the consequences of important decisions. They need trusted adults who can recognise when something is wrong. And they need systems that allow them to seek help when they need it. This does not mean turning schools into substitutes for families. It means recognising that education is ultimately about preparing people for life, not merely examinations.
A young person who can achieve excellent grades but cannot recognise manipulation, ask for help or make a reasoned decision about their future has received an incomplete education.
YOUNG WOMEN NEED ROOM TO THINK
This is particularly important for young women. Girls are often raised with strong expectations about what they should study, how they should behave, when they should marry and what kind of life they should build.
Some expectations are expressed with love. Others are enforced through fear, shame or social pressure.
Either way, young women need more than instructions about how to fit into the lives others have imagined for them.
They need room to ask: What do I want? What are my values? What kind of life am I trying to build? What does a healthy relationship look like? What are my boundaries? What opportunities should I pursue? What should I do when the expectations placed on me conflict with what I believe is right for my future?
These are not selfish questions. They are questions of agency. Agency does not mean doing whatever one wants without consequences.
It means developing the ability to understand one’s choices, consider their consequences and participate meaningfully in determining the direction of one’s life.
WHERE ARE THE INSTITUTIONS?
This brings us to leadership.
We speak frequently about Africa’s young population as an economic opportunity. We talk about entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and the future workforce.
But there is a question beneath all of that: Are we building the institutions that help young people become capable of carrying that future?
It is not enough to tell young people that they are the leaders of tomorrow.
Where are the structures that prepare them? Where are the trusted mentoring systems? Where are the accessible guidance and counselling services? Where are the safe mechanisms for reporting abuse? Where are the programmes that teach decision-making rather than simply motivation? Where are the spaces where young people can discuss difficult questions without being dismissed? These are leadership questions. Because leadership is not only about managing today’s problems.
Leadership is about creating the conditions in which tomorrow’s problems are less likely to occur.
EMPOWERMENT MUST MEAN MORE THAN OPPORTUNITY
We use the word “empowerment” frequently. But empowerment without clarity can be dangerous. Giving someone opportunities without helping them develop judgment does not necessarily produce good outcomes.
Information is not the same as wisdom. Access is not the same as capacity. Confidence is not the same as discernment. A young person can be confident and still make destructive choices.
What we need is a deeper form of empowerment—one that develops the capacity to think, question, recognise risk, seek counsel, understand consequences and make decisions with greater clarity.
Young people today are exposed to enormous amounts of information and influence. They are navigating social media, changing cultural expectations, economic uncertainty, relationships and an increasingly complex world of work. They need more than instructions. They need people and institutions that help them develop judgment.
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
The responsibility does not belong to government alone. Parents have a role. Schools have a role. Universities have a role. Communities have a role. Civil society has a role. And young people themselves have a role.
But institutions matter because some problems are too important to leave entirely to individual effort. A parent cannot create a national safeguarding system. A teacher cannot redesign an entire education system. A young woman cannot create a support structure simply because she needs one.
This is why our conversation about youth development needs to become more serious. We should stop measuring our commitment to young people only by the number of scholarships awarded, training programmes launched or motivational events organised.
Those things matter. But we should also ask whether young people are becoming better equipped to navigate the decisions that shape their lives. Are they developing judgment? Do they know where to turn when they need help? Can they ask difficult questions without fear?
Are we giving them the tools to think critically before they are confronted with decisions whose consequences may last a lifetime?
THE QUESTION WE SHOULD BE ASKING
Perhaps the most important question is not: “What do we want young people to become?”
It is: “What are we building around them to help them become it?”
Young people cannot be expected to navigate complicated lives with nothing more than warnings. They need guidance without control. Freedom with responsibility. Education with wisdom. Confidence with discernment. And institutions that make it possible to ask for help before a difficult situation becomes a life-altering one.
We tell young people to make better choices. But better choices do not happen in a vacuum. They are shaped by what people have been taught, what they have seen, what they believe, whom they trust, what options they can see and whether they have a safe place to ask questions.
If we are serious about the future of our societies, we must stop asking only what young people should become. We must begin asking what we are building around them to help them become it.
That is not merely a question for parents or educators. It is a question for leadership. And ultimately, it is a question of what kind of society we are choosing to build.
Amb. Elaine Michelle Nwaokoro is an author, leadership thinker, and advocate for human potential. She is a Research Associate at the Sixteenth Council UK, where her work contributes to research and ideas on leadership, society, and human development.