I want to tell you about someone who changed the way I think about leadership, innovation, and what it means to stay.

Princess Abumbi Prudence is the daughter of King Abumbi II of the Bafut Kingdom in Cameroon. The Bafut Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Her lineage is real. Her responsibility is real. And so is the crisis that has torn her region apart for over a decade.

More than 3,000 people have died. Over 7,000 have been displaced. Families are surviving in forests. Children have lost everything. And the world — our world — has barely acknowledged it.

She could have left. She stayed.

"At first I was broken," she told me. "Every human is sensitive emotionally. My mind was broken mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically."

But she took a step. Then another. She founded Youths and the Future — bringing vocational training, talent shows, journalism workshops, and humanitarian support to young people who had been told, in every possible way, that they had no future.

Then she said something I can't stop thinking about:

"Technology did not come to abolish indigenous knowledge. Technology only came to upgrade, to adapt modernity. But people are making that mistake by struggling to erase indigenous knowledge."

She's now building the Royals Echo Village Bafut — a regenerative center that blends ancestral farming practices, cultural immersion, media infrastructure, and youth enterprise into a self-sustaining model. Not a museum. Not a charity project. A living, breathing hub of African innovation designed to generate its own revenue and replicate across the continent.

Her message to refugees and displaced persons watching from camps, feeling invisible:

"You are alive. There is hope. Money is only valuable when we have people. Material things have value when we have people. Our value is you. You are special. You are unique. You are loved. You are not forgotten."

This woman is not performing leadership for cameras. She is living it in the trenches, in a crisis the world forgot, building something that could outlast all of us.

I recorded the full conversation. It's one of the most important interviews I've ever done.

🔗 Read the full story: https://www.joshuatberglan.com/the-royal-architect-of-hope-princess-abumbi-prudence-on-healing-cameroon-through-indigenous-innovation

If this moves you, share it. If you want to partner with Youths and the Future, reach out. The Royals Echo Village needs investors, collaborators, and people who believe that the future doesn't have to erase the past to move forward.

crisis response

The Royal Architect of Hope