Nathaniel Luz is convinced Africa can leverage on technology to catch up with the rest of the world. More importantly, this revolution will happen if what is referred to as the “cheetah” generation of Africa embraces the ideas of liberty. Accordingly, he recently co-founded Cheetah Africa, a non-profit registered in Nigeria that would pool African startups and provide them the necessary support structures needed for global relevance, scalability, and competitiveness. Nathaniel believes Students For Liberty was crucial to helping him achieve this milestone,

“In SFL we had to understand how organizations work. There was a process of professionalization and SFL set a high standard. When you were planning an event, you had to submit a proposal and if it were not up to standard, you had to resubmit. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this training shaped me, it made me better equipped to develop my own organization.”

Nathaniel became involved with Students For Liberty in 2014, after attending the ASFL Conference. He went on to become a very active leader, participating in the Liberty Writers Workshop and writing an article that received over 5,000 views in 48 hours. That is when he realized there was a hunger for pro-liberty content among African youth. As a Local Coordinator, Nathaniel has hosted several campus events that include the Liberty Workshop, the Writers Workshop, and Ideas of Liberty Colloquy. His impressive work for liberty in West Africa earned him the Event of the Year Award at the 2017 West African Regional Conference.

“SFL showed us the standard and put us in a situation where we were thinking beyond being students. We were thinking of ideas and how to create an impact in the present and for the future. I also built a large network and the first contacts I made outside my own country were SFL contacts.”

Cheetah Africa launched in August 2018, which partially came as a result of the question, “Why can’t Africans flourish in Africa?” His platform is meant to give support to talented young Africans and hopefully, stop the brain drain in his country, and across the region. For him, the “cheetah” generation of Africa will use the information revolution to help Africa catch up with the rest of the world. He remembers being surprised to learn that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, lost $50 billion dollars, and that is more money lost in one day than the entire net worth of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote.

But to take advantage of the information age, African youth need assistance. Youths who have innovative ideas that can make Africa great currently lack support – be it financial, educational, ideological – to turn their ideas into reality. To this end, Nathaniel has also launched the Free Africa Project, aimed at publishing and distributing pro-liberty books around Africa to spread the of liberty far and wide, “The ideas of liberty can serve Africa, they fulfill a need created by the lack of freedom and can rescue Africa. I am grateful to SFL for the leadership training that allowed me to envision what liberty can do for my continent and what practical steps I can take to get us there.”