Eighty Years: A Thank You to His Excellency, President Afwerki

To His Excellency, President Afwerki — Isaias Afwerki, on the occasion of your 80th birthday, this is more than a tribute. It is a sincere thank you—for a life devoted to responsibility, restraint, and the long work of sovereignty.

Thank you for choosing service before title. Thank you for standing with your people when Eritrea had little more than resolve to lean on. You learned leadership not from distance or comfort, but through shared struggle—through discipline, patience, and sacrifice lived alongside those who carried the same burden. That grounding shaped a vision that has never wavered.

Your Excellency, you understood early what many leaders learn too late: creating something from nothing requires time, dedication, and the refusal to trade tomorrow for applause today. Leadership, like parenthood, is not a temporary obligation. In many cases, it is a lifetime role. You accepted that role knowingly—choosing stewardship over spectacle and continuity over convenience.

Eritrea was not handed a functioning state. It emerged from war, scarcity, and relentless external pressure. Building from those conditions demanded focus and a long view. It is within this context that your most consequential decisions must be understood. You charted a course that rejected dependency as policy. Eritrea became the first in Africa to decisively close the door on USAID—not as a gesture, but as a statement of principle: that development must answer to national priorities, not external agendas. In the same spirit, Eritrea refused to anchor its future to IMF and World Bank debt, understanding how easily conditional finance becomes conditional sovereignty. Those choices were difficult. They were also protective.

You safeguarded Eritrea while others worked night and day to weaken it—politically, economically, and diplomatically. Yet your response was not reactionary. It was steady. Institutions were held together. Corruption was restrained. Self-reliance was treated not as a slogan, but as a discipline practiced daily. Eritrea’s endurance is not accidental; it is the product of careful guardianship.

Your vision was shaped by study as much as by struggle. As a young man, you went to China—not to imitate, but to learn: organization, self-reliance, long-term planning, and the patience required to rebuild after historical trauma. You carried those lessons home, adapting them to Eritrea’s reality and embedding them in a national ethic that values independence over indulgence.

Equally telling is how that ethic has been expressed beyond Eritrea’s borders. Even under pressure, Eritrea has extended assistance to Sudan during times of hardship. Even amid conflict, Eritreans have witnessed aid and restraint shown toward Ethiopians in moments of crisis. The treatment of prisoners of war—marked by discipline and humanity—has spoken loudly of character. These are not small details. They reflect a moral framework that separates leadership from vengeance and principle from convenience.

President Afwerki, your leadership has been guided by memory and discipline—by an understanding of how fragile freedom can be and how easily it can be bartered away if vigilance fades. This is why patience mattered more than speed, self-reliance more than approval, and long-term stability more than short-term comfort.

You carried this responsibility not for praise, but for preservation. You chose the harder road repeatedly, understanding that real nation-building is quiet work—measured in institutions held together, sovereignty defended year after year, and a people kept answerable first to themselves.

On this milestone birthday, we honor not only your years, but your consistency. Not only your authority, but your loyalty to the idea that Africa can stand on its own terms. Your life affirms a rare truth: fearless leadership is not loud—it is steady.

Thank you, Your Excellency, for the vision that refused dependency, the discipline that protected autonomy, and the moral clarity that placed humanity above spite even in war. Thank you for staying the course. Thank you for believing that building a nation, like raising a family, requires patience, protection, and commitment that does not expire.

Happy 80th Birthday, President Afwerki.

May history remember not only what you said—but what you safeguarded for generations to come.