We live in a world that worships the new. We chase innovation and digital updates. We often overlook our most valuable resource. Our elders represent a living library. They hold practical skills and hard-won wisdom. They carry our cultural history in their memories. This library has no digital backup. When an elder passes, a unique collection of knowledge disappears forever. We must learn to access this wisdom while we still can. My late mother and uncle shared a close bond

Last Sunday, my cousin graduated as a medical doctor. The ceremony took place in a hotel filled with our entire tribe. When they announced her entrance, she did not walk in quietly. She danced through the door with four fellow graduands, moving to music that soon had the entire hall swaying and clapping along. It took her ten minutes to dance from the entrance to her seat at the front of the hall. Each step celebrated years of struggle and study. You could feel the joy spread

My practical work in gender equality started at a community level. I saw a well-intentioned agricultural programme fail. It aimed to boost harvests, but by giving land titles only to men, it ignored the women who did most of the farming. These women could not access credit for better seeds. That experience taught me the true power of policy. A policy is not just a document. It is a set of rules that shapes real lives. When we learn to analyse these rules, we gain a powerful t