The resounding defeat this past week of the only political party that has governed Botswana since it gained independence 58 years ago sent tremors across the African continent.

A spirited young population has over the past year disrupted old-guard liberation parties that had been relying on their credentials from the days of fighting colonialism to stay in power.

That strategy seems to be losing its effectiveness as young people become a larger share of the electorate on a continent where the median age is 19, the youngest in the world.

Many young Africans say they care less about how much a politician suffered fighting colonizers, and more about whether those politicians are stealing public money, providing jobs and respecting basic freedoms, like free speech.

It is fine for governing parties that grew out of liberation movements to hold on to their history, “but we also cannot be holding on to that history when we are doing wrong,” said Lindiwe Zulu, a member of the national executive committee of the African National Congress in South Africa.

There, the so-called born-free generation that has never lived under apartheid has long agitated for new political leadership. They got it this year when the African National Congress, which had governed since apartheid fell and democracy took hold in 1994, plummeted below 50 percent in national elections for the first time.