A Toast to Cameroonian Youth: Culture, Creativity, and the Work Ahead
The writer celebrates the emergence of a youth-led cultural renaissance in Cameroon—from music to fashion to digital media—while issuing a call for this generation to move beyond individual success toward collective nation-building. The piece names both the achievements and the work of unlearning that lies ahead.
Culture will always be a window into the inner workings of a society and a determinant of the future socioeconomic outcomes of that society.
In 5 years, a music industry which had been cuffed in neglect is now churning out top tier artists who stand the litmus test of Africa’s creme de la creme. Look inside and you’ll find it is entirely the making of a youth population that made the decision to seize the wheel and drive onto their dreams readily facing and running over obstacles intentionally or unintentionally put in place by the laziest generation of Africans to ever exist. Today, we boast of a MTV award winning artist and chart topping songs in Africa. We have models and makeup artists who are able to make some income, and the revenue streams continue to increase.
At 15 I was one of those mix and matching fabric with ideas - creating never before seen outfits for my friends to rock on their school party nights. All the lazy generation ever said of us was useless, stubborn and recalcitrant - never once did they commend us for our creativity and entrepreneurship. Nobody thought to call me a future fashion designer or creative director - not that those words did not exists then and not that that lazy generation did not claim senior command of the English language. Today I am voting in places for best fashion designer, casting my vote for someone who has not only employed himself but many others.
In November and December last year, we voted again for the second edition of the Bonteh Digital Media Awards - another initiative by someone under 30 stumbling on a path never traveled but forging on - feeling the fear and doing it anyway - shining a light on talent and work that is crucial for our survival in an increasingly digital world. Gifted mom and Infiuss came from this same generation. Where it used to be that you have to get at least a first degree before you are given a seat at the table of how to make a dime, we are changing that rhetoric - age is slowly becoming just a number and the force of creativity is overcoming the force of experience.
For the first time, our voices are being heard and whether they like it or not, they will increasingly be forced to take us seriously because as I observed crowds marching and chanting songs of freedom in Anglophone Cameroon 2 years ago, I could hardly see any faces over 30. Thanks to the same youth I speak of today, the world knows there is a people somewhere taking a stand for justice and for humanity.
We may be stumbling - making mistakes and that is only natural because we have never been here before.
Nobody ever taught us how to react to a MTV award winning artists in our midst.
Nobody taught us how to behave when your neighborhood mate becomes a celebrated somebody.
Nobody taught us how to vote.
Nobody told us we too could become president.
Nobody taught us the science of art appreciation.
Nobody taught us about cash flows and how money works.
Nobody taught us about love of country and sacrifice.
Instead, they filled our minds with limitations. A greedy me only mentality coupled with telling us many of the things we have achieved today were reserved for the white man. The white man to whom they auctioned our destiny.
Any-Ha!
My fear is that our current progress has solely been informed - for the most part, by our selfish interest. I dare say for a long lasting and sustainable triumph, each and everyone of us must share a singular purpose- that of transforming our society from a cesspool of ignorance and the high table of mediocrity to a viable competitor in the international market for ideas and services. We have to build a society in which the ultimate dream is not to run for shelter in another mans land. We have to build a society the rest of the world can pay to experience. Social media has given us an open platform that we can use to unite under a singular purpose. We can decide to use it to our benefit or we can decide to use it to finish what we have left in the form of sanity. The future will be determined by the next thing you post or share on your social media page. BE RESPONSIBLE.
- Tino Foy
Written in early 2019, the post reflects on roughly five years of visible cultural momentum in Cameroon, set against a backdrop of generational friction and recent social upheaval. It speaks to a moment when young Cameroonians had begun to claim space in music, fashion, and digital spheres traditionally gatekept by older elites, while also processing the weight of witnessing youth-led activism in the Anglophone regions.
Then, it was a clarion call at a moment of real cultural shift—naming emerging artists and platforms (MTV awards, Bonteh Digital Media Awards, Gifted Mom, Infiuss) as proof that the youth were remaking Cameroon's cultural landscape without permission. Now, it reads as a diagnostic of a generation's hopes and blind spots: the exhilaration of breaking through, paired with an early warning about the limits of individual hustle without collective vision. It remains relevant as a portrait of what happens when a generation inherits neither infrastructure nor belief in itself.