Africa's Unfinished Work: Healing Generations Shaped by Collective Trauma
Across the African continent and conflict zones worldwide, a generation of young people carries the psychological weight of displacement and loss. Leaders across sectors now face a growing challenge: how to lift up and unlock the potential of young people still burdened by trauma they may have never directly experienced.
At the fourth annual Africa in the World Festival in Stellenbosch, South Africa, the McNulty Foundation co-hosted a panel that probed this issue.
The panel featured members of the McNulty Prize community: Hope Azeda, founder and curator of the Ubumuntu Arts Festival, and Mohamed Ali Diini, founder and director of Iftin Global, joined in community with moderator Ann Lamont, recognized for uniting diverse stakeholders to support children orphaned by the AIDS crisis.
Together, they explored how leaders can create the conditions for healing, and why this work is foundational to Africa's future. Watch the full panel event, and read on for key insights.
The conversation was prefaced with a sobering fact: Africa has experienced the highest number of armed conflicts since World War II, with over half of all global conflicts occurring on the continent. Centuries of colonial extraction and struggles for independence came at a profound psychological cost.
If the heart is wounded, you cannot dance.
Anne Welsh McNulty, Founder & President of the McNulty Foundation
Hope approaches this reality through art and memory. A Rwandan playwright and director, she has spent more than three decades using performance to engage with the legacy of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. She described Rwanda as a "school of life," where healing unfolds over time and remembrance is essential. Through the Ubumuntu Arts Festival, founded in 2015 and held annually in Kigali 100 days after the genocide commemoration, Hope creates space for communities to hold pain collectively and begin to transform it.
Hope Azeda, Founder and Curator of the Ubumuntu Arts Festival
Art restores imagination, particularly for "Generation 25”—young people born after 1994 who now make up the majority of Rwanda's population. Though they did not directly experience the genocide, many still carry its emotional weight through intergenerational trauma.
Since I was born, I have found war in this world. But how can I refuse to be bound by that energy? How do we identify the energies that truly destroy us—those that destroy our imagination?
Mohamed's journey began when he was displaced to the United States as a child refugee. Years later, he returned to Somalia to launch an economic development program and startup accelerator aimed at creating opportunities for young entrepreneurs. There, he uncovered an unexpected barrier: young Somalis struggled to embrace these rare opportunities and unleash their fullest potential. Listening closely to their stories and conducting original research revealed the root cause—decades of conflict and terrorist attacks had left deep psychological scars and shattered their ability to imagine better futures. Their bodies still responded to conflicts that ended decades or even centuries ago through hypervigilance, anxiety, and depression.
In response, Mohamed turned to community-based care, training trusted local figures, including grandmothers and lay counselors, to provide mental health support. Today, Iftin Global has reached more than 300,000 people through direct services and impacted the lives of nearly one million Somalis through mental health education.
Mohamed Ali Diini, Founder and Director of Iftin Global
As governments and private sectors focus on emerging questions of productivity, artificial intelligence, and the future of work, Mohamed poses a more fundamental question informed by his work at Iftin: are young people neurologically ready for these opportunities?
The mistake we make in Africa is that we see independence as the cure. In reality, it is a misdiagnosis. Independence was the breaking of the fever—it was the first time our continent could truly feel the depth of its wounds.
For Hope, the Ubumuntu Arts Festival's expanding global reach—from Sri Lanka to the Juilliard School in New York—demonstrates how performance-based healing resonates across cultures. With more than 70 performances and representation from over 30 countries this year, the festival has emerged as a global model for reconciliation and repair.
Visionary changemakers from across the world convened at the Festival in South Africa.
Looking forward, a resilient Africa can only emerge when young people can imagine, create, and thrive without carrying trauma they never directly experienced. Hope and Mohamed's work reveals a truth that leaders cannot ignore: the continent must confront the neurological legacy of colonialism as the public health crisis it is. After all, a wounded heart cannot dance.
Watch the full conversation from the panel event to explore these insights further:
The fourth annual Africa in the World Festival was hosted in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Founded by Dele Olojede, a 2011 John P. McNulty Prize Laureate and the first African-born Pulitzer Prize winner, the festival has become a vital space to examine Africa’s past, present, and future—inquiries rooted in his lifelong work from chronicling the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide to shaping discourse on African public affairs.