Dr. Jerry Yonga’s Vision for a Life of Writing

A Manifesto of Purpose, Defiance, Creativity, and Legacy

Writing, for me, has never been about permission. It has never been about waiting for a committee, an academic council, or some gatekeeper with a red pen to approve my imagination. Shakespeare never asked Africans for permission to write Julius Caesar, yet my generation memorized his verses in hot African classrooms. Molière never sat with our elders in Douala, Limbe, or Bamenda, yet his plays became required readings for children who had never seen the Parisian world he described. Jean-Paul Sartre never tasted African cassava, palm oil, or njama-njama, yet African students continue to study his philosophy as if our continent has no thinkers of its own.

So why must I, an African man with stories in my bones, wait for anyone’s permission?

The truth is simple:
I do not. And I will not.

The state of Florida in the United States is banning books, removing them from shelves as if ideas were dangerous weapons. But history shows the opposite - suppressing stories only strengthens the resolve of storytellers. Writers like Chinua Achebe proved that one voice from one village could echo across the world and define an entire era. Achebe did not wait for approval. He wrote because the story in his chest refused to keep quiet.

Fela Kuti never waited for authorization to sing about power, corruption, love, and freedom. His creativity was rebellious, electric, and raw, a reminder that African ideas are not fragile. They are volcanic. They erupt. They transform. They disturb. And they endure.

Nico Mbarga gave us Sweet Mother, a song that traveled across continents without any blessing from a gatekeeper. Who told him he was allowed to compose such a masterpiece? No one. He simply did it. And generations of Africans still dance to a song he wrote from his heart.

So when people ask why I write so many books — I smile. I write because stories chase me. Ideas interrupt me. Thoughts land in my mind whether I am sitting at home, walking in a hospital, or flying across the Atlantic. I have traveled to 26 countries, and airplanes have become my creative studio. While others pass time watching movies or flipping through recycled airline magazines, I open my laptop and write. I use those hours to give life to something that may outlive me.

I am not competing with anyone.
I am simply fulfilling a calling placed in me long before I understood it.

With Amazon KDP, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, AI, and today’s self-publishing tools, no one can silence a writer anymore. The printing press once belonged only to the elite; now it belongs to anyone with a thought worth sharing. It belongs to dreamers, rebels, professors, grandfathers, immigrants, and Africans who grew up on stories told around kerosene lanterns.

So I write - freely, joyfully, unapologetically.

Sometimes I write serious books about AI, cybersecurity, leadership, or project management. Sometimes I write humor, like the Picklization of Humans. Sometimes I write stories that sound like the voices of my ancestors. I write for adults, for students, for professionals, for mothers and fathers, and for kids who will grow up in a world where their grandparents’ stories matter just as much as Shakespeare’s.

And one of my greatest motivations is something deeply personal -
I want each of my grandchildren to find their name in one of my books.
When I am gone, and when the world tries to forget who I was, they will hold a book with their name, written by their grandfather. That is legacy. That is immortality. Not in a museum or a library, but in the heart of a child who knows, “My grandfather wrote this.”

My goal is clear and sacred:
Write 100 books before I leave this earth.
100 stories, 100 lessons, 100 pieces of me scattered like seeds across the world.

If one becomes a bestseller - wonderful.
If none becomes a bestseller - I am still fulfilled.

Because success for me is not measured by Amazon rankings.
It is measured in the courage to write.
To speak.
To create.
To leave something behind.

This is my vision.
This is my mission.
This is the fire I carry.

And every day I live, I will write - not because the world expects it, but because the world deserves to hear an African voice that refuses to be silent.