POV: Dear Africans and Beyond, Let’s Build Together, Love Itiafa
By Itiafa Ayeni, Class of 2029.
When I arrived at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport in Zanzibar, as a freshman at Georgetown University in Qatar, attending a conference on “Reimagining Africa: Youth, Heritage, and Leadership for a Global Future,” I was armed with one phrase in Swahili. I learned it on TikTok, and I repeated it at every counter: asante sana.
Although I didn’t yet know that it meant “thank you,” I held onto it as a lifeline, an assertion that I belonged in this unfamiliar space. And by choosing to belong, I learned my first lesson in gratitude from the smiles of welcome I got in return.
That initial choice to embrace belonging through gratitude shaped the rest of my stay. It started by exploring Stone Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where history lives through 200-year-old buildings and interwoven Arab-African cultures.
Scenes from around Stone Town, Zanzibar.
Whether singing a cappella alongside Maasai performers or carrying a falcon at Forodhani Gardens, I learned that being grateful and open to learning about new communities leads to participation. I practiced observing before speaking, listening before interpreting, and accepting discomfort—even when a wide-eyed falcon was comfortably perched on my elbow.
When the conference began, I embraced that I belonged among those who dream of a sustainable, developed Africa. And in observing, listening, and embracing discomfort, suddenly, it was true.
I arrived at the conference hoping to become one of the post-independence African revolutionaries shaping the next generation of leadership, but I left with a collective vision rooted in community, relationships, and embracing my culture as a strength.
As a result, I am embracing my role as a young leader, offering a roadmap to how I turned theory into action.
- Step 1: Discover yourself, your community, and your purpose.
- Step 2: Embrace your culture as the foundation of resilience. Seek out your community’s history and memories, and do so at every new community you enter. Ground your actions in those values and the African tradition of circularity.
- Step 3: Cultivate collective hopes and dreams rather than personal ambition. Development requires that we work together to build sustainable systems first.
And so to my dear Africans and those beyond, I invite you to join me in building Africa together. If you feel that you don’t belong here, let me be the first to express my gratitude that you are. Asante sana.
Other Black History Month Stories
In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the many contributions of our Black students, alumni, faculty, and staff to our community and society, and recognize the broad range of teaching, scholarship, and advocacy at Georgetown aimed at advancing Black heritage and history.
