As East African finance ministers prepare for Budget Day, and as the wider Horn and Great Lakes region moves through its own budget cycle, the figures will sound immense. Kenya is working with a budget framework of roughly USD 37.2 billion. Tanzania's is about USD 23.7 billion. Uganda's latest spending projection is about USD 22.7 billion. Rwanda's proposed 2026/27 framework adds about USD 5.3 billion, while the Democratic Republic of Congo's 2026 state budget has been revised to about USD 21.9 billion. Ethiopia's current approved federal budget adds a further USD 14.1 billion.

Combined, these six spending plans place roughly USD 125 billion on the table.

But the real test of these budgets will not be their size. It will be whether they shift power, opportunity and decision-making towards the generation that must live longest with the consequences of the choices being made today.

This is the question our region must confront: are our budgets simply funding government activity, or are they giving young Africans the agency to build the next economy?

Africa has grown comfortable speaking of its youth as a demographic dividend. The phrase is now familiar in summits, speeches and policy papers. But a dividend is not automatic. It is earned. It is organised. It is financed. It is governed. It becomes real only when young people are educated, healthy, skilled, connected, employed and included in the rooms where choices are made.

The World Bank has long cautioned that Africa's youth employment challenge is not solved by simply waiting for formal jobs to appear. Young people need pathways into productivity across agriculture, non-farm household enterprises and the modern wage sector. The African Development Bank's Jobs for Youth in Africa strategy set out an ambition to create 25 million jobs and equip 50 million young people with employable skills. The African Union, through the African Youth Charter and Agenda 2063, has already placed youth empowerment, participation and employment at the centre of the continent's development compact.

Our difficulty is not that Africa lacks frameworks. It is that too many frameworks still treat young people as beneficiaries rather than as partners, builders and decision-makers.

That must change. Youth empowerment cannot be reduced to small grants, annual youth events or token seats at policy forums. It must mean access to capital, skills that match real markets, procurement opportunities, land and digital infrastructure, mentorship, social protection, and credible routes into leadership. It must also mean the right to shape policy before decisions are final, not after budgets have already been printed.

This is where youth agency becomes an economic argument. When young people are trusted with resources and authority, they do not only look for jobs. They create them. They build new firms, new services, new tax bases and new markets. They move ideas from informal survival into productive enterprise. They turn local problems into businesses that can employ, export and retain value at home.

The opportunity goes far beyond any single sector. Youth-led enterprise can unlock value in climate-smart agriculture, food processing, tourism, digital services, the creative economy, clean energy, circular manufacturing, logistics, community health, data systems, sustainable construction and local value chains.

This is the shift we must make: from speaking about young people to budgeting with them; from designing youth programmes to redesigning economies so that young people can participate meaningfully in them; from asking youth to wait their turn to giving them a stake in the present.

Research on youth engagement in employment policy shows why this matters. Too often, youth participation is confined to ministries of youth, which tend to have limited budgets and limited influence over the economic policies that actually determine employment. Trade, agriculture, finance, labour, industry, education, environment and technology ministries all shape young people's prospects, yet young people are rarely given structured influence across those spaces. If youth policy lives in one ministry while economic power lives elsewhere, participation becomes symbolism.

There is also evidence that skills alone are not enough. Studies from Rwanda comparing workforce training and cash grants show that both can strengthen entrepreneurship, but credit, markets and wider reforms still determine whether enterprise becomes transformative. That lesson should sit at the centre of our budget debates.

We should train young people, yes. But we must also finance them. We should mentor them, yes. But we must also buy from them. We should invite them into consultations, yes. But we must also give them decision rights, procurement access and a fair chance to shape public priorities.

For finance ministers, this has practical implications. Every major budget line should carry a youth agency test. Does it create decent work? Does it open procurement to young firms? Does it finance youth-led enterprise? Does it include young people in implementation and oversight? Does it reach rural youth, young women, young people with disabilities and those outside elite networks? Does it help move young people from informal survival into productive, dignified and taxable work?

The most dangerous thing a government can do with a young population is to admire it rhetorically while excluding it institutionally. Young Africans are already speaking in the language of agency. We have seen it in classrooms, farms, start-ups, creative spaces, community organisations, conservation landscapes and the streets. They are not waiting politely for permission to inherit the future. They are asking why they are still locked out of decisions that shape it.

In my own reflections on Africa's youth, I have argued that this generation is not a statistic. It is a force. It is educated, connected, restless and unwilling to accept systems that treat it as an afterthought. The right response is not fear. It is partnership. Governments, private sector institutions and development organisations must hire young people, listen to them, validate their experiences, finance their ideas and allow their leadership to change how we work.

This Budget Day, East Africa and the wider region should therefore ask a deeper question than how much money is being spent. We should ask how much power is being transferred to the generation that must, and is willing, to build what comes next.

A country does not become richer simply by spending more. It becomes richer when it trusts its people to create new value. East Africa's future will be stronger when its budgets finally trust its young people to lead it.

Chief Executive Officer, African Wildlife Foundation.