From the Football Field to the Podium: A South Sudanese Youth Leader's Journey of Service
I did not grow up thinking I would one day hold a microphone in front of hundreds, lead student associations, or represent voices beyond my own.
I was just a young boy with a passion for football, a strong sense of responsibility, and a heart that quietly carried the weight of leadership even before I fully understood what it meant.
This is not a story about titles. It is not a story about positions or appointments or certificates on a wall. It is a story about what happens when a young person from South Sudan, a country the world has largely given up on, refuses to give up on himself, his people, or the belief that service is the highest form of purpose.
It is my story. And I share it not because I have arrived at some destination, but because I believe that every young African reading this is standing at the beginning of a journey they have not yet dared to start.
Where It All Began: Dusty Fields and Early Lessons
The year was 2009. I was a young boy in South Sudan, and the world I knew was not one of conference rooms or student parliaments. It was football fields dusty, uneven, without the fancy equipment or formal structures that other young people in other parts of the world took for granted.
But on those fields, something was happening that I would not fully understand until years later.
I was appointed captain of a local football club. And in that moment, standing in front of teammates who were looking to me to lead them, inspire them, and hold them together, I encountered for the first time the true weight of responsibility.
Nobody taught me leadership in a classroom. There was no manual, no training program, no mentor who sat me down and explained what it meant to carry others. I learned it the way most African children learn the most important things through doing, through failing, through getting up, and through the unspoken trust of people who believed in you before you believed in yourself.
In those fields, I learned things that no formal education has ever improved upon.
I learned that a leader takes responsibility for defeats as readily as they claim victories. That is when the team loses, the captain does not look for someone else to blame, he looks inward first, asks what he could have done differently, and shows up the next day ready to try again. I learned that inspiring a team is not about speeches; it is about the consistency of your presence, the steadiness of your effort, and the sincerity of your care for the people around you.
I learned that leadership is not about being the best player on the field. It is about making every player around you better.
Those were not football lessons. They were life lessons. And they planted a seed that would spend the next fifteen years growing into something I could never have imagined, standing on those dusty South Sudanese fields in 2009.
A New Country, A New Chapter: Finding My Voice in Uganda
In 2018, I made one of the most significant decisions of my life. I left South Sudan and moved to Uganda to pursue my education at Ebenezer Secondary School.
I want to be honest about what that move meant. Leaving your home country is never simple, and leaving South Sudan carries a particular weight. It is not just leaving a place. It is carrying that place with you, its stories, its struggles, its people, its unfinished promise into every room you walk into in a new land. You become a representative of something before you have chosen to be. People look at you and see South Sudan. And you learn, quickly, that how you carry yourself is how you carry your country.
Uganda was not easy at first. A new environment, new social dynamics, new expectations. But I discovered something about myself in that difficulty that I find clarity in service. That is when I am serving others, I know exactly who I am and why I am here.
From 2019 to 2021, I served as a Class Counsellor at Ebenezer Secondary School. It was not a glamorous role. There were no headlines, no ceremonies, no speeches in front of large crowds. It was quiet, consistent, daily service, being the person that fellow students could come to when they were struggling, confused, homesick, or overwhelmed.
That role taught me the art of patience in a way that nothing else has.
It taught me that people do not need someone who has all the answers. They need someone who will sit with them in the uncertainty and not run away. They need someone who listens without immediately trying to fix. They need someone who shows up consistently, not just when it is convenient or impressive.
It taught me that trust is not given. It is built slowly, quietly, through hundreds of small moments where you choose the other person's needs over your own comfort.
Those two years as a Class Counsellor were not stepping stones to something more important. They were some of the most important leadership developments I have ever received. Because they taught me that the foundation of every leadership role I would ever hold was not authority, it was relationship. Not power, it was trust.
Rising to Represent The Minister of Information
My commitment to service did not go unnoticed. I was elected as the first Minister of Information in the South Sudanese Students' Association at Ebenezer Secondary School.
Let me tell you what that title meant to me beyond the words.
South Sudanese students living in Uganda are a community that carries enormous complexity. We are students in a foreign country, doing our best to build futures while our home country remains unstable. We are young people navigating questions of identity, belonging, and purpose in an environment that is not fully our own. And we are representatives, whether we choose to be or not, of a nation that the world associates primarily with conflict and failure.
Being the first Minister of Information in that association meant being the first person to formally hold the responsibility of shaping how our community communicated with itself, and with the world outside it. It meant being the voice that could either amplify division or promote unity. The voice that could either feed negative narratives about South Sudan or challenge them.
I chose to challenge them.
I learned during that period that information is never neutral. What you say, how you say it, what you choose to amplify, and what you choose to let die in silence are leadership decisions. Being a Minister of Information taught me that communication is itself a form of governance. The leader who controls the narrative has a power that goes far beyond any formal authority.
It was a period of tremendous growth, immense pressure, and absolute clarity of purpose. I knew why I was there. I knew whose voices I was carrying. And that knowledge was enough to keep going even when the pressure was significant.
The Pinnacle President of the Association
In 2022, I was honored to serve as President of the South Sudanese Students' Association at Ebenezer Secondary School, a role I held until 2023.
I have written in other articles about what leadership from a student union position actually feels like from the inside, the weight of it, the conflict, the loneliness, the moments where you carry more than you expected and have fewer resources than you need. All of that was true in this role.
But this role had a dimension that I want to speak about, specifically the dimension of representing a community in exile.
When you lead an association of South Sudanese students in Uganda, you are not just managing a student organization. You are holding space for a community of young people who are far from home, who carry the grief and pride of their nation simultaneously, who are trying to build futures in a country that is not theirs while never forgetting the country that is.
Every decision I made as president carried that weight. When I resolved conflicts between members, I was not just solving interpersonal disputes; I was modelling what South Sudanese people could be to each other when they chose unity over division. When I advocated for students' rights, I was not just fighting for individuals; I was fighting for the dignity of a community that the world had too often treated as a problem to be managed rather than a people to be respected.
That presidency was a defining chapter in my development, not because of what I achieved for my own career, but because of what I understood about the meaning of representation. About what it means to carry others with you into every room you enter. About the sacred responsibility that comes when people trust you with their voice.
Expanding My Impact: Deputy Minister of Welfare
In November 2024, I took a significant step forward when I was appointed Deputy Minister of Welfare in the Greater Equatoria Students' Union in Uganda, a union representing students from the heart of South Sudan's Greater Equatoria region across different institutions in Uganda.
This appointment expanded my scale of service in ways I found both exciting and humbling.
Welfare is a word that can sound bureaucratic and cold. But what welfare actually means when you take it seriously is that you are responsible for the well-being of real people. Whether students have what they need to survive and succeed. Whether the people in your community who are struggling have somewhere to turn. Whether the systems that are supposed to support students actually work for the students who need them most.
I took that responsibility seriously. I take it seriously still.
Because I know what it means to be a young South Sudanese person far from home, navigating systems that were not built for you, in an environment that does not always understand your context. I have been that person. And the reason I fight so hard in every leadership role I hold is because I know what it feels like when nobody is fighting for you, and I am determined that the people in my community will not feel that way as long as I have any ability to do something about it.
The Bari Students' Union Coming Home to My Roots
In 2025, I was appointed President of the Bari Students' Union in Uganda.
Of all the roles I have held, this one carries a particular personal significance that I want to explain carefully.
The Bari people are my people. The Bari community is not just my ethnic group; it is my identity, my culture, my language, my history, my roots. Leading the Bari Students' Union is not just a leadership position. It is an act of cultural stewardship. It is a responsibility to ensure that young Bari people far from home have a community that holds their identity with pride, that preserves what makes us who we are, and that builds unity among people who share a heritage that is worth protecting.
I carry this role with immense pride and with the clear understanding of what it demands.
It demands that I lead not for popularity but for purpose. I make decisions based on what is right for the community, not what is comfortable for me personally. I model the kind of leadership that our culture, at its best, has always celebrated: servant leadership. Leadership that bows to serve before it stands to speak.
My mission as President of the Bari Students' Union is simple to state and difficult to live: to unite our people and serve with unwavering dedication.
Simple. But those six words contain everything that matters about why I lead.
Why I Lead: The Answer That Has Never Changed
People ask me why I keep taking on leadership roles. Why do I keep putting myself in positions of responsibility that bring pressure, conflict, and sacrifice alongside every moment of meaning and impact?
The answer has not changed since I was a boy on a football field in South Sudan in 2009.
I lead because I believe young people deserve authentic representation. Not performative representation — not leaders who wear the title while serving their own interests, but genuine advocates who carry the community's needs into every decision they make.
I lead because I believe our rich culture must be preserved and celebrated. The Bari culture. South Sudanese culture. The traditions, values, and wisdom that our communities carry are not relics of the past. They are the foundation on which a better future must be built. Every young person who loses connection with their culture loses a compass. And every leader who fails to celebrate that culture fails the community they serve.
I lead because I believe unity will always triumph over division. I have seen what division does to people, to families, to communities, to nations. I have seen it in South Sudan, where political division has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of futures. I have seen it in student organizations, where personal conflicts destroy communities that could have been powerful. Unity is not an idealistic slogan. It is a survival strategy. And building it is the most important work any leader can do.
Leadership is more than a role. It is a calling. It is about standing in the gap when others cannot. Amplifying voices that might otherwise go unheard. Building a vision that serves not just today's needs but tomorrow's possibilities.
I serve because I cannot imagine doing anything else.
What My Journey Has Taught Me About Leadership
Fifteen years of leading from a football field in South Sudan to student unions in Uganda have taught me things I could never have learned from a book, a course, or a motivational seminar.
Leadership is not a destination. It is a daily decision. Every morning I wake up and choose again to serve, to show up, to carry the weight of the people who have trusted me. There is no point at which you have "arrived" at leadership. There is only the choice to lead today and then again tomorrow.
Your roots are not a limitation. They are your greatest asset. Being South Sudanese, being Bari, having grown up on dusty football fields without formal structures or resources, these things did not hold me back. They gave me a perspective, a resilience, and a depth of purpose that no privileged background could have provided. Never let anyone tell you that where you come from disqualifies you from where you are going.
Service is the only form of leadership that lasts. Leaders who lead for power lose it eventually. Leaders who lead for status are forgotten when the status disappears. But leaders who lead for service leave something behind in the people they served, in the communities they built, in the changes they made possible. That is the only legacy worth building.
You do not need a perfect path to become a leader. You need the courage to take that first bold step. My path has not been perfect. It has been marked by displacement, by the weight of leading communities in exile, by the pressure of representing a nation the world has too often dismissed. But every step, including the uncertain ones, the difficult ones, the ones I was not sure I was ready for, led me to where I am now. And where I am now is exactly where I am supposed to be.
A Message to Every Young African Who Thinks They Are Not Ready
I want to end this article with a direct message to you, the young person reading this, who has leadership inside them and a reason they have not yet acted on it.
You are not too young. I was captaining a team at an age when many people said young people should just play and not lead.
You are not too poor. I grew up in one of the world's most resource-deprived environments and found leadership opportunities in every stage of my journey.
You are not too unknown. Every leader who is known today was unknown yesterday. Recognition follows service; it does not precede it.
You are not in the wrong place. I am from South Sudan, a country the world associates with war and failure. I lead with that identity proudly, not despite it.
The only thing standing between you and your first leadership step is the decision to take it.
Start where you are. Lead what is in front of you. Serve the people closest to you. And trust that the path will reveal itself one step at a time, the way it revealed itself to a young boy on a dusty football field in South Sudan, who had no idea where those first steps would eventually take him.
The football field taught me everything. The podium gave me a platform. But the purpose of all of it has always been the same.
Service. Unity. People.
That is why I lead. And it is why I will never stop.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Silas Tonny?
Silas Tonny is a South Sudanese youth leader, writer, and community organizer based in Uganda. He is the co-founder of Radiant Empowerment Hub and currently serves as President of the Bari Students' Union in Uganda. His leadership journey spans over fifteen years, from captaining a football club in South Sudan in 2009 to holding multiple student leadership roles across Uganda.
What is the Bari Students' Union in Uganda?
The Bari Students' Union in Uganda is a community organization representing students from the Bari ethnic community of South Sudan who are studying in Uganda. It works to preserve Bari culture, promote student unity, and advocate for the welfare of Bari community members in Uganda.
What is Radiant Empowerment Hub?
Radiant Empowerment Hub is a youth empowerment organization co-founded by Silas Tonny, focused on building the next generation of credible, servant leaders across Uganda and the wider African continent. It works to bridge the gap between young people's potential and the opportunities and skills they need to lead effectively.
What lessons has Silas Tonny taken from his leadership journey?
The core lessons from Silas Tonny's leadership journey include: that leadership is a daily decision rather than a destination; that one's cultural roots are an asset rather than a limitation; that service is the only form of leadership that creates lasting impact; and that the courage to take the first step matters more than having a perfect path.
Conclusion: The Journey Continues
I began this story on a football field. I am writing it from a leadership position I could not have imagined when I first laced up my boots on that dusty ground in South Sudan.
But I know with complete certainty that I am not yet where this journey ends.
There is more to serve. More to build. More voices to amplify, more communities to unite, more young people to encourage into the leadership roles that Africa desperately needs them to fill.
The journey from the football field to the podium has not been a straight line. It has been a series of steps taken in faith —in the belief that service matters, that young people deserve authentic leadership, and that a young South Sudanese boy with nothing but passion and responsibility in his heart could grow into something that served his community and his continent.
That belief has never failed me. And it will not fail you.
Take your first step. The journey is waiting.
Written by Silas Tonny, a South Sudanese writer and youth leader based in Uganda. Co-Founder of Radiant Empowerment Hub and President of the Bari Students' Union in Uganda. Silas writes on African governance, youth leadership, and civic accountability from the unique perspective of someone who has seen firsthand what leadership failure truly costs a nation and what servant leadership can build in its place.
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"You don't need a perfect path to become a leader. You need the courage to take that first bold step."
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