Leadership Conference: Dr. Yaw Perbi

The last speaker on day one of our leadership conference was Dr. Yaw Perbi, who spoke of our role as young people on the development of Africa and the importance of cultural awareness. His talk started with an amusing ice-breaker; a brain auction. This loosened everyone up and shook away any tiredness that might have lingered after lunch.

Dr. Perbi's emphasis was on learning from previous generations of African societies. As he candidly put it; one generation build great pyramids, and another sold their fellow countrymen as slaves. It is up to us, he said, to decide what kind of generation we are going to be. Instead of constantly looking at the past, we should focus on the present and try to use our culture as a platform to haul us forward.

With that being said, Dr. Perbi emphasized that culture is dynamic, never static. It is constantly evolving. He defined culture as the result of people trying to meet the challenges of their environment at that time. We can't use the same culture for years on end - we need to 'edit' it to address the problems that we face today. To edit a culture though, we must first understand it. Once we have understood it and we are aware of the problems we are facing, we are in a much better place to adapt what we have to get to where we need to be.

Too many young people, he explained, grow up thinking they have no role to play in their countries development. This couldn't be further from the truth! Young people are imperative when it comes to development. Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Tetteh Quarshie... they were all young when they started. Bill Gates registered Microsoft when he was 21. Where would we all be if they had decided that life begins at 40?

Dr. Perbi then went on to explain that if any young generation has a chance to do great things for their country, it's this one. There are more young people now than there have ever been - 86% of the world's population are youth, and 56% of them are in developing countries like Ghana. With the internet, transfer of information is at it's highest point. When books are released halfway across the world, we can have access to them in seconds. He advised us to be global citizens; to take the best of what is out there and ad it you the best that we can be.

Lastly, he asked us never to think that we will not be heard. Sometimes in our society it is easy to feel 'sat on' as older people may think that young people are to be seen and not heard. But there are ways around that. We were urged to write - blogs, articles, letters to MPs, on Facebook, anywhere - and keep writing until we see a difference. Never send something to only one place, and most of all, never give up!

Yaw Perbi is on Twitter; click here to follow him.