Young people must cast off the restraints that hold them back and harness their full potential.

Somalia’s Youth Are Tired of Waiting — and They’re Redefining Power

In Mogadishu’s bustling Bakara Market, where new smartphones and secondhand books share the same tarp, you meet a generation raised online but boxed in offline. They scroll through global ideas and opportunities on cracked screens, yet face a political landscape at home that feels both fixed and far away. This is the quiet paradox of Somalia today: a young, connected society living under an older, disconnected politics.

More than any single headline, the deeper story in Somalia right now is about power — who has it, who doesn’t, and how a new generation wants to define it. It’s not a breaking news moment. It’s a turning point, if the country’s majority youth decide that resignation is a luxury they can’t afford.

A generation raised online, boxed in offline

United Nations estimates suggest that roughly seven in ten Somalis are under 30. The median age is about 16. That is a demographic wave, not a ripple — and waves, by nature, change shorelines. But if you talk to students in Hargeisa, coders in Garowe, or shopkeepers in Kismayo, a common refrain emerges: we were told we are the country’s hope; we are rarely trusted with its decisions.

Their grievances aren’t abstract. Jobs are scarce; clinics and classrooms are uneven; corruption feels entrenched. Clan politics, which has historically provided a sense of social safety, often doubles as a gatekeeper system that shuts out those without the right surname or patronage. Insecurity, meanwhile, steals time and attention — the two raw materials of ambition.

And yet, there is a current of ingenuity that refuses to be still. Somali entrepreneurs build logistics apps that work where roads don’t. Community teachers convert WhatsApp groups into free tutoring hubs. Migrant remittances still prop up the economy. What Somalia’s youth lack in formal channels, they replace with improvisation.

Redefining power: from posts to purpose

The most important shift may be conceptual. Power, in the youth vocabulary now emerging, is less about title and more about coordination. It’s organizing, not office. That sounds like theory, but it’s the stuff of practical rebalancing.

Think of power as a triangle that young Somalis are slowly redrawing:

• Need defines what must change — from inequity to insecurity to the public’s distrust.
• Assets are what youth already have: skills, time, networks, energy, and knowledge.
• Power happens when those assets align with clear needs through collective action.

In a sentence: power is not given; it’s built. Or, as a Somali saying puts it, “Gacmo wadajir bay wax ku gooyaan” — joined hands can cut through anything.

The barriers: clan, corruption, insecurity

Critics will say this is easier to write than to do. They’re right. Somalia’s civic space can be cramped and dangerous. Entrenched interests aren’t eager to cede ground. Corruption erodes trust even within youth circles. Polarization — clan-based, ideological, regional — fractures the very coalitions that would make change possible.

But these are precisely the problems that movements are designed to solve. Movements thrive on clarity of purpose, transparency in method, and discipline in tactics. If goals are specific — not “fix the country,” but “open city council meetings,” “audit public tenders,” “ensure school budgets are published” — then momentum can be measured, one small victory at a time.

Lessons from Lagos, Khartoum, Dakar

Youth-led change is not a Somali aspiration alone. In Nigeria, the #EndSARS movement pressured authorities to confront police abuses. In Sudan, students and professionals helped topple a dictator in 2019, even as the struggle for a democratic transition continues. In Senegal this year, young voters turned long simmering anger over governance into a decisive electoral message.

None of these are tidy stories. Some faced repression; others were co-opted or stalled. But they share a lesson: when younger citizens transform frustration into organizing — with data, discipline, and dignity — they alter the political weather. They make the status quo work harder to justify itself. And they remind the region that legitimacy is not a birthright; it is a performance review.

What a youth-led agenda could look like

Somalia doesn’t lack ideas; it lacks scaffolding. Here are practical steps that fit the country’s realities and the youth’s strengths:

• Build civic skills like products. Treat civic organizing as vocational training: project management, budgeting, public speaking, community mapping, and digital security. NGOs and universities can host short, low-cost “civic labs” that graduate organizers the way coding bootcamps graduate developers.
• Make local government the new frontier. National politics are locked; districts and municipalities are where service delivery happens. Youth coalitions can push for public budget disclosures, citizen scorecards for clinics and schools, and participatory planning that ties spending to neighborhood priorities.
• Use the phone as a parliament. Secure messaging channels and open-source tools can track public promises, document procurement, or coordinate community safety. Somalia’s famed knack for mobile money can inspire equally nimble platforms for civic accountability.
• Replace personality cults with value-based networks. Movements endure when they’re built around principles — fairness, dignity, equality, freedom — not one charismatic face. That makes them harder to fracture and easier to replicate.
• Tell the story, often and everywhere. Somalia’s greatest export is its story of resilience. Young journalists, poets, and filmmakers should document small wins and setbacks alike. Narratives don’t just reflect change; they recruit it.

Quitting won’t fix it. Quiet resolve might.

It’s tempting to check out. Somalia’s young people have been asked to hope for a long time; many feel that hope has been squandered by older elites who confuse survival with leadership. But disengagement is a gift to the very forces that keep the door closed. As Angela Davis reminds us, “Freedom is a constant struggle.” Struggle isn’t despair; it’s the price of progress.

The ethical question facing Somalia’s youth isn’t only political. It’s generational: what norms will we pass on? Will tomorrow’s leaders learn to mobilize beyond clan lines, or to merely master them? Will the country’s brilliant informal ingenuity be harnessed for a common good — or remain a private coping mechanism?

There’s a quieter courage now taking root. You can hear it in the matter-of-fact way a group of university volunteers in Baidoa clamp down on exam cheating, or how a women’s cooperative in Bosaso posts its books online. No hashtags. Just standards, building muscle memory for accountability.

Somalia’s past consumed time. The future will be built by those who treat time as capital. If you are 22 today, your horizon is not this news cycle but the next two decades. That is long enough to build institutions that outlast cynicism. It is long enough to make sure the next teenager logging on in Mogadishu doesn’t feel boxed in.

In the end, politics is only one language of power. Organizing is another. The first asks for a seat at the table. The second builds the table, invites neighbors, and writes the agenda in plain Somali and plain truth.

And if you need a final compass, listen again to the proverb your grandparents already gave you: joined hands can cut through anything.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.