The countries that invest in youth now will be the ones that define global innovation in the coming years

• Monica Geingos is founder of Leadership Lab Yetu and former first lady of Namibia

For the first time in our history, more than 70% of Africans are under the age of 30. This, along with entrenched inequalities, poverty, unemployment and socioeconomic fault lines, is reshaping how our societies interact with one another and the world.

This is Africa’s most consequential decade. Leaders who take office over the next 10 years will have to deliver on difficult mandates within a political, economic and social landscape that has been fundamentally altered.