Young people are constantly told to make better choices: choose the right career, surround yourself with good friends, stay in school, avoid harmful relationships, speak up when something goes wrong and build a better future.
The advice sounds straightforward. But there is a more important question we often fail to ask:
Who is teaching young people how to make those choices?
Young people make some of the most consequential decisions of their lives while they are still developing the confidence, judgment and emotional maturity needed to navigate them. Yet society often expects them to figure everything out on their own.
For young women, the challenge can be even more complicated.
A girl’s education may be influenced by her family’s expectations. Her career may be shaped by assumptions about what she should become. Questions about relationships, sexuality and marriage may be avoided because they are considered uncomfortable or inappropriate.
At school, she may experience situations she does not know how to discuss. She may face harassment or abuse but remain silent because she does not know whom to trust.
She may enter a relationship without understanding the difference between healthy affection and control, only to realise later that manipulation was mistaken for love.
And when things go wrong, society may ask: “Why did she make that choice?”
Perhaps the better question is:
“What did we give her to help her make that choice?”
The Problem Is Bigger Than Individual Choices
Society often places considerable emphasis on personal responsibility.
Young people are told to be disciplined, ambitious, careful and responsible. They are expected to protect themselves and make wise decisions.
Those expectations are important. But individual responsibility cannot be separated from the environment in which decisions are made.
Good judgment does not automatically develop simply because someone gets older. It develops through experience, guidance, reflection, conversation and access to people who can help us think through difficult situations.
A young person may understand that education is important but still have no idea how to choose a career.
They may know that abusive relationships are harmful but fail to recognise manipulation when they encounter it.
They may understand that they should speak up but remain afraid of what might happen if they do.
They may want to make independent decisions while growing up in an environment where questioning authority is viewed as disrespect.
That is why telling young people to make better choices is not enough.
We must teach them how to make better choices.
The Family Is the First Institution
The process begins at home.
The family is a child’s first institution of learning. Its lessons extend beyond academics to include trust, relationships, boundaries, responsibility and decision-making.
Yet many families are more comfortable giving instructions than developing judgment.
A child may be told which career to pursue because it is considered respectable. A daughter may be told whom she should marry because her family believes it knows what is best for her.
Questions about sex and relationships may be avoided because they make adults uncomfortable. Failure may be treated as shameful instead of being viewed as an opportunity to learn.
In some households, obedience can be valued more highly than thoughtful independence.
Parents have a responsibility to guide their children. But guidance is not the same as control.
There is a significant difference between telling a young person what to do and teaching that young person how to think about what they should do.
The second approach requires conversation, patience and listening. It also requires parents to recognise that their children will eventually have to make decisions that cannot be made for them.
Schools Must Teach More Than Academics
Education is another important part of the equation.
Schools rightly focus on helping students read, calculate, analyse and compete academically. But young people also need preparation for the realities of life.
They need safe spaces where they can ask difficult questions without immediately being judged.
Young people need practical life skills
Students need to understand boundaries, healthy relationships, conflict, personal responsibility and the consequences of important decisions.
They also need trusted adults who can identify when something may be wrong and systems through which students can seek help.
This does not mean schools should replace families.
Rather, it means recognising that education is ultimately about preparing people for life, not simply preparing them for examinations.
A young person who can achieve excellent grades but cannot recognise manipulation, ask for help or make informed decisions about their future has received only part of the education they need.
Young Women Need Room to Think
The issue becomes 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 the kind of life they should build.
Some of these expectations come from love and concern. Others may be enforced through fear, shame or social pressure.
Either way, young women need more than instructions about fitting into lives that others have already imagined for them.
They need room to ask themselves:
- What do I want?
- What are my values?
- What kind of life do I want to build?
- What does a healthy relationship look like?
- What are my boundaries?
- What opportunities should I pursue?
- What should I do when expectations placed on me conflict with what I believe is right for my future?
These are not selfish questions.
They are questions of agency.
Empowerment means developing agency
Agency does not mean doing whatever one wants without considering the consequences.
It means developing the ability to understand available choices, consider their consequences and participate meaningfully in determining the direction of one’s life.
Young women need that capacity if they are to make informed decisions about education, careers, relationships and their futures.
Where Are the Institutions?
The conversation also brings us to leadership.
Africa’s young population is frequently described as an economic opportunity. Governments, businesses and development organisations talk about entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and the future workforce.
But beneath all of those conversations lies a more fundamental question:
Are we building the institutions that will 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 preparing them?
Where are the trusted mentoring systems?
Where are accessible guidance and counselling services?
Where are safe mechanisms for reporting abuse?
Where are programmes that teach decision-making rather than simply motivation?
And where are the spaces where young people can discuss difficult questions without being dismissed?
These are leadership questions.
Leadership is not only about solving today’s problems. It is also about creating conditions that make tomorrow’s problems less likely to occur.
Empowerment Must Mean More Than Opportunity
The word “empowerment” is frequently used when discussing young people.
But empowerment without clarity can be dangerous.
Giving someone opportunities without helping them develop sound judgment does not necessarily produce positive 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 decisions.
What is needed is a deeper form of empowerment — one that develops the ability to think critically, question assumptions, recognise risks, seek advice, understand consequences and make decisions with greater clarity.
Young people need guidance, not just motivation
Today’s young people 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 therefore need more than instructions.
They need people and institutions that help them develop judgment.
The Leadership Challenge
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. Young people themselves also have a role.
But institutions matter because some challenges 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.
And a young woman cannot create a support structure simply because she needs one.
This is why conversations about youth development need to become more serious.
We should not measure our commitment to young people only by the number of scholarships awarded, training programmes launched or motivational events organised.
Those initiatives matter.
But we must also ask whether young people are becoming better equipped to navigate the decisions that will shape their lives.
Are they developing sound 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 face decisions whose consequences could 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 unnecessary 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 life-altering.
We tell young people to make better choices.
But better choices do not happen in a vacuum.
They are influenced by what people have been taught, what they have experienced, 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 of leadership.
Ultimately, it is a question of what kind of society we are choosing to build.
About the Author
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.
