By Josephine Sesay
Sierra Leone’s political class has spent years preaching hope to the nation’s youth. But today, that hope has thinned into frustration, skepticism, and more dangerously indifference, a generation once full of enthusiasm for change is now asking a painful question, what has politics ever done for us?
The uncomfortable truth is this: Sierra Leone’s youth no longer believe in politicians because politicians have not believed in them.
Every election cycle, young people are promised jobs, yet Sierra Leone still faces some of the highest youth unemployment and underemployment rates in West Africa. degrees gather dust while graduates walk the streets searching for opportunities that simply do not exist.
Government after government has pledged youth empowerment, entrepreneurship schemes, and employment packages. But most of these programs collapse due to corruption, become politicized, or benefit only a well-connected minority.
For many young Sierra Leoneans, it feels as though the nation’s leaders remember them only when the cameras are flashing and votes are needed.
It is not just unemployment crushing the younger generation it is survival itself, food prices continue to rise, transport fares increase after every fuel adjustment, rent in urban centers like Freetown has become nearly impossible to manage, even basic commodities such as rice, oil, and sugar now feel like luxury items for the average young household.
Meanwhile, the political elite live in comfort, insulated from the very economic hardship they claim to be fighting, when leaders cannot feel what citizens feel, their promises lose all credibility promises before elections, excuses after elections, and silence when the people demand results.
A generation that feels powerless is a generation at risk at risk of migration, at risk of radicalization, at risk of retreating into silence instead of participating in national life. Sierra Leone cannot afford this.
Young people are not asking for the impossible, they are asking for sincerity, opportunity, and leadership grounded in empathy,create real jobs not press releases. Address the cost-of-living crisis with urgency not excuses, fight corruption from the top not only the bottom, give youth a genuine seat at the decision-making table not symbolic roles, deliver results not slogans.
Sierra Leone’s young people are not demanding miracles, they want leaders who understand their struggles, respect their intelligence, and act with integrity, until the nation’s leaders stop treating youth as political pawns and start treating them as partners in progress, the trust deficit will continue to widen and the consequences will be felt by the entire nation.
Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Wednesday, 26th November 2025 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
