I've always loved sunsets, especially here in Lagos. There’s something about the way the sky changes from a soft pink to a deep orange, then slowly to purple, that makes the whole city seem like it’s waking up, but the irony of it all was that Lagos never slept. Years back, life had become significantly harder and people were too busy hustling to put food on their tables that they hardly sat down to admire the sunsets but today, I’m on my balcony, looking out over a transformed city, and I can’t help but feel like I’m witnessing a miracle. A miracle that “we’’—my generation, Gen Z—made happen.
When I was younger, I used to dream of an Africa where we weren’t defined by our struggles, a continent that didn’t just survive, but thrived. Lagos was always chaotic--traffic jams, bad power, overcrowded slums... It felt like we were always fighting against something: corruption, bad leadership, poverty even ourselves. But now? things have changed, looking back, it feels too good to be true.
I take a deep breath. The air is cleaner than it’s been in my lifetime, and the usual Lagos heat feels a little more bearable. This city used to choke on pollution, not just noise pollution but land pollution, we never really had a proper waste management system so people resorted to dumping their refuse in the open streets and the power cuts—ah, the “endless” power cuts, I remember when we would rain insults on the NEPA officials when the lights went off whilst watching our favorite shows or the times when having light in our homes for a day felt like a luxury because it meant there would be power outage for the next three days but now, there’s not a single black-out. Not even during the hottest days. I’m staring at the solar panels covering rooftops and the wind turbines spinning lazily in the streets.
Lagos isn’t just a city anymore. It’s a symbol of what Africa can be when we take matters into our own hands.

I pull out my phone and I see a lot of notifications, updates from different projects, news from around the continent. There's the latest from the Green Africa Continental Project. I smile to myself. That was the one that started it all. From the moment I first pitched the idea to my friend Chuka, back when we were still in university - God rest his soul, I knew we could change things. Maybe not “all” of Africa at once, but we could start in one place and build out from there. I remember my early pitch meetings— the down-side of it all was how I missed lectures and had to defer my admission for a year because of the conviction I had and how I had to fully focus to make the Green African Continental Project a reality, how I would go from office to office trying to secure funding for the project, how people would laugh when I talked about turning Lagos into a renewable energy hub. ‘’Fine girl, this your idea make sense ohh but country dey hard and nobody go fit help you for this sapa period’’, they would always say.They didn’t get it back then.With Chuka by my side, we were able to form a community that shared our beliefs and ideas, people used to look and refer to us as “bad belles’’, to them, we were the overzealous generation Z who were just trying to spoil everything with our so-called AI technology.Now, we’ve proven everyone wrong. Nigeria, along with other African nations, is now 100% powered by renewable energy. There’s no more gas flaring in the Niger Delta, It’s all solar, wind, geothermal—clean energy. Now, we export tech to other countries. Solar panel tech, AI-powered energy grids—it’s Africa leading the charge.
The sound of a motorbike zipping by catches my attention. I chuckle to myself. A few years ago, delivery drones were a joke—something you saw in sci-fi movies. Now, they're as common as Okadas but with way less noise. Everything’s faster now. From foodstuffs to clothes to even medicine.
In the past, kids in remote villages couldn’t even imagine what a computer was, let alone know how to use it. Now, every school, from the big cities to the most remote villages in northern Nigeria, has access to a digital learning platform, coding has been introduced into the Nigerian curriculum. We built free Wi-Fi hotspots powered by solar energy, and created content that covered everything from coding to environmental science. Kids in rural areas now have the same opportunities to learn tech, science, and math as the ones in Lagos.
I open the Green Africa Continental Project app on my phone to check the latest updates. There’s a message from the team about new clean water initiatives they’re rolling out in the rural areas of Sierra Leone. I quickly scroll through the post, my heart swelling with pride. Clean water, renewable energy, digital education these were the pillars of the change we’d been working toward and now they were all intertwined, like a massive, unstoppable force.
"Ahh Onyi, check this out," a voice suddenly says. I glance up, startled. I didn’t hear anyone come through the door. My older brother, Uche, is standing in the doorway, holding up his own phone. “I Just got the latest update from the Pan-African Health Initiative. They're rolling out Free healthcare for everyone in every African country, powered by AI. No more waiting in line for days just to see a doctor."
I blink at him. “Mad ohh, that’s insane.”
“Abi! …No more jampacked hospitals, people won’t travel for hours just to get a diagnosis anymore.”
I used to think my dreams were too big—too idealistic. But now, they’re not just dreams. They're becoming reality. We’re building the Africa we’ve always imagined: an Africa that’s sustainable, tech-savvy, educated, and, most importantly, equitable, the Africa of our dreams.A GENZ's Africa.