By Sani Muhammad
There is a season in your life when opportunities arrive in quick succession. Invitations to conferences come easily. Passports fill with stamps. You move from one panel to another, sit in rooms described as “high-level,” speak passionately about issues you care deeply about, and feel quietly or loudly, that you have arrived. In those moments, the applause feels earned, the pictures feel powerful, and relevance seems permanent.
But relevance, when it is not rooted in substance, is fragile.
Across the African development space, many young people mistake exposure for expertise and movement for progress. There is an over-sense of importance that can creep in when our contributions do not go beyond well-rehearsed talking points, social media captions, and being the familiar youth face filling a quota. The danger is subtle – you are busy, visible, and celebrated, yet not necessarily growing.
Somewhere along the line, the real work is forgotten. Learning slows. Skills stagnate. Curiosity is replaced with comfort. The goal becomes the next travel opportunity, the next fellowship, the next panel, and sometimes even the next per diem. When the invitations pause, so does the income. When the spotlight shifts, a sense of loss creeps in. And slowly, inadequacy takes root.
Then time passes.
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A new crop of hungry, prepared, deeply skilled young leaders emerges. They take on the same roles you have held onto for years, roles you should have outgrown five years ago. You look around and realize that your peers have moved on into policy rooms, technical roles, leadership positions, or institutions where decisions are shaped, not just discussed. You, however, are still celebrating the same opportunities in 2026 that should have been stepping stones long left behind.
At that point, the pictures betray you. The world leaders you “know” do not, in fact, know you. You shared a frame, not a vision. When you need a serious technical role, policy seat, or strategic position, there is little to point to beyond memories of movement. The suitcase is full, but the portfolio is empty.
This is not a condemnation. It is a call to pause and reflect.
Those fellowships, travels, and global convenings are not the destination, they are tools. Use them wisely. Invest deeply in your personal and professional growth while the doors are open. Learn the systems behind the slogans. Understand policy beyond hashtags. Build technical skills, research capacity, program design expertise, monitoring and evaluation competence, financing literacy, whatever your niche demands. Let your network become more than people you greet at events; let it become relationships rooted in trust, collaboration, and shared work.
Build something tangible beyond the suitcase.
Not everyone needs to be a founder. The pressure to “start something” can be just as distracting as the pressure to always be visible. Sometimes the wiser path is to find people who share your vision, learn under them, build with them, support each other, and grow together. Apprenticeship is not weakness. Learning under others is not failure. Depth takes time, humility, and focus.
And do not be afraid of seasons of stillness. If others are traveling and you are not, resist the urge to panic. Stillness can be productive when it is spent building competence. Visibility will return, this time not as tokenism, not as youth representation for optics, but as authority. When you truly become an expert, you are no longer invited just to fill a seat; you are invited to shape what happens behind the scenes and in front of the camera.
It is never too late to live a life beyond the suitcase.
Be ambitious, but be intentional. Be focused, but be patient. Let your early exposure fuel discipline, not entitlement. Let the rooms you enter challenge you to become better, not just louder. Because in the long run, the development sector does not need more familiar faces, it needs prepared minds, steady hands, and people whose impact outlives their travel history.
Build now, so that when the rooms open again, you enter not just as a young person in the room, but as someone the room genuinely needs.
