Why we need old leaders for stability and Young leaders for CHANGE.

Ladies and Gentlemen As we age, we begin to understand that the future does not belong to us. Young people know their way around the world, they have the energy and the knowledge of how some things work.

That is why we ask 12-year-olds to help us hack into the CIA’s secret computer vaults. This is, of course, not dismissing the vast institutional knowledge and experience older people bring to the world.

But there comes a time when it dawns that humankind has been stuck on some sort of repeat button ever since we managed to walk upright and it’s time to opt out and binge watch episodes of Downton Abbey or reruns of 'Sgudi 'Snaysi if you can afford to.

While the global average age of a political leader used to be around 51, it is now not unusual for young people to lead their parties or their countries.

Here’s a short and random list of people who became leaders of their parties or their countries (for better or for worse) round about their 50s:

Abraham Lincoln (51), Adolf Hitler (43), Kenneth Kaunda (40), Uhuru Kenyatta (53), Tony Blair (43), Angela Merkel (46 when she became the leader of the CDU and 51 when she became Chancellor of Germany), Tony Leon (44). Strangely, we tend to want our leaders to be older than us, unlike our film stars.

When Bill Clinton was elected as the imagined leader of the free world in 1993 at the age of 46, it was decidedly odd coming to terms with the fact that Mick Jagger was older than him (50).

Barack Obama was 47 when he became America’s president in 2009. Thomas Sankara (an icon for modern revolutionaries) was only 33 when he staged a popularly supported and successful coup in 1983, renaming Upper Volta Burkina Faso.

Sankara was assassinated by former compatriot, Blaise Compaoré, in 1987.

Patrice Lumumba was 36 when he became the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo in 1960. A Belgian execution squad, aided by Congolese collaborators, assassinated Lumumba seven months after independence.

Benazir Bhutto became the first woman Prime Minister of Pakistan at age 35 in 1988. She was elected for a second term in 1993 and was assassinated in December 2007.

Yes There are risks, as it would appear, to the young leader of a country but the buck stop at the young.