At 3 AM, Nairobi’s Central Business District should be asleep. But from my 12th-floor office window, I count at least forty other glowing rectangles—each one lit by the cold blue light of a laptop or smartphone. Inside every window is someone like me: chasing deadlines, refreshing inboxes, worshipping at the altar of productivity.
My colleague Tunde calls it “the grind.” He says it with the kind of reverence usually reserved for prayer. “You have to respect the grind,” he tells me when I suggest we might be working too hard. “This is what it takes to make it in the city.”
But what if the grind is grinding us into dust?
The Gospel of Perpetual Motion
In African cities, hustle culture has become gospel. From Lagos to Kigali, from Johannesburg to Accra, the narrative is the same: sleep is for the weak, rest is for the privileged, and success belongs to those who outwork everyone else. The city doesn’t just reward hard work – it sanctifies exhaustion.
This isn’t simply about ambition. We’ve created a mythology around burnout. The startup founder who hasn’t slept in 72 hours becomes a folk hero. The creative juggling three jobs is called “inspiring.” The exec who answers emails during a funeral becomes the gold standard.
We confuse movement for momentum, noise for impact, and burnout for brilliance. Even our language betrays us. We’re never “tired”—we’re “grinding.” We’re not “overwhelmed” – we’re “on the hustle.” We’ve rebranded breakdowns as breakthroughs, and wear exhaustion like a designer accessory.
The Colonial Blueprint of Overwork
To understand this hustle worship, we have to dig deeper – beneath the skyscrapers and productivity hacks – into the colonial foundations of African work culture.
The Protestant work ethic imported by colonial systems was never just about diligence. It was about proving one’s worth. Under that lens, colonized Africans had to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. That legacy didn’t vanish with independence – it evolved.
Today’s urban African professional is still trying to prove something in systems that weren’t built for their success. Overwork becomes a survival tactic. Perfection feels like a prerequisite for basic respect.
In the city, this pressure amplifies. Unlike the village – where communal safety nets soften failure – urban life demands relentless motion. There’s no margin for pause. The city offers opportunity, yes – but it also isolates. In that isolation, burnout thrives.
When Success Tastes Like Suffering
There’s a cruel irony at the heart of this. The very things we destroy in pursuit of success – our health, our joy, our relationships – are the things that make success meaningful.
I think of Amara, a friend in Accra who built a thriving marketing agency by working 80-hour weeks for three years straight. She has the house, the accolades, the respect. She also has insomnia, panic attacks, and a marriage in name only. When I ask her if it was worth it, there’s a long silence.
“I don’t know how to stop,” she finally says. “I don’t remember who I was before the grind.”
This is the unspoken cost. A generation of high-functioning, high-achieving Africans who are quietly unraveling. We’ve optimized everything – except our well-being. The cities are full of burnt-out brilliance.
The Pressure Cooker Effect
Urban African life is a pressure cooker designed to extract maximum output from minimal resources. Wages rarely keep pace with inflation. Infrastructure lags behind ambition. And the competition? Relentless.
The middle class is especially trapped. Too privileged to complain. Too precarious to rest. Living in the exhausting limbo between aspiration and arrival.
And then there’s social media – the new fuel for burnout. LinkedIn has become a theater of performative productivity. Instagram curates the aesthetic of busyness. We don’t just compare ourselves to colleagues anymore – we compare ourselves to curated highlight reels of people we’ve never met.
It’s not just a grind. It’s a global sport.
The Myth of the Superhuman African
There’s a particularly damaging narrative that Africans are naturally more resilient. That we can endure more stress, more poverty, more pain. This mythology, born from colonial disregard and modern capitalism, still undergirds our work culture today.
It’s why mental health support is still seen as indulgent. Why boundaries are interpreted as laziness. Why asking for help feels like failure.
This myth is killing us softly. It convinces us that self-care is selfish and that our breaking point is merely the beginning. It pushes young professionals to work through grief, sickness, and exhaustion – convinced that pain is the price of purpose.
We mistake self-destruction for self-discipline. And we pass that belief down.
What Burnout Really Costs
The damage isn’t just personal – it’s generational.
A society that rewards burnout over balance cannot sustain creativity or innovation. Exhausted people don’t think boldly. They don’t collaborate well. They can’t build with vision.
Even the economy suffers. Burnt-out employees make costly mistakes. Chronic stress tanks productivity. And the healthcare costs? Rising. African cities are now seeing alarming spikes in stress-related illnesses among professionals under 40.
We are building economies on the backs of people who are quietly falling apart.
When Rest Feels Like Rebellion
Perhaps the cruelest effect of burnout culture is how it has made rest feel like a crime. Taking a vacation becomes an act of guilt. Saying no becomes an act of courage. Setting boundaries feels like sabotage.
We’ve forgotten that rest is productive. That innovation needs recovery. That creativity is born in quiet spaces, not just crowded schedules.
Meanwhile, the world’s most innovative companies are prioritizing mental health, flexible hours, and sabbaticals. They’ve realized that burnt-out teams don’t build legacies.
But in African cities, rest is still framed as luxury. We don’t yet believe that a rested person can be successful. That a soft life doesn’t mean a small life.
Signs of a Quiet Rebellion
But something is shifting.
A new generation of African workers is quietly rejecting the hustle gospel. They’re saying no to unpaid overtime. They’re prioritizing therapy, sabbaticals, slow mornings. They’re building careers rooted in balance, not burnout.
And slowly, employers are catching up. The companies offering flexible work, mental health days, and human-centered leadership are attracting the best talent. The old model – where long hours equaled loyalty – is losing relevance.
Entrepreneurs are leading the way too, creating businesses that center sustainability over “scaling at any cost.” They’re proving that you can build wealth without breaking down.
The question is no longer “how hard are you willing to work?” It’s “how well can you work – and still be whole?”
A New Definition of Success
If African cities are to survive this century—not just economically but humanely—we must redefine success.
Not as relentless output. But as intentional impact.
Not as perfection. But as sustainability.
Not as sacrifice. But as fullness.
We must dismantle the belief that suffering is proof of ambition. We must tell new stories—about rest, balance, boundaries, and the kind of joy that doesn’t require burnout to earn it.
Because what’s the point of winning if the prize is a life you’re too tired to enjoy?
The Choice Before Us
The future of work in African cities is being written right now. We have a choice.
We can keep building systems that extract, deplete, and discard. Or we can build something better—systems that nourish, protect, and inspire.
It’s not a choice between ambition and mediocrity. It’s a choice between longevity and collapse. Between thriving and merely surviving.
As I write this, it’s 3 AM again. But tonight, I’m choosing something different. I’m closing my laptop. Trusting the work will wait. Trusting I am enough, even at rest.
The grind promised us everything. But what if everything means nothing, if we’re too broken to enjoy it?
How are you redefining success for yourself? Share your story in the comments or read next: The Stories in Our Stew: What We Lose When We Stop Cooking.
Africlout 