In War Girls (2019) by Tochi Onyebuchi, the Nigerian civil war becomes an instrument in the creation of a future shaped by conflicts, technological growth, and environmental crisis. With space colonies and cybernetics, the world of tomorrow offers a great potential wasted by the re‑enactment of the scenario from the past. The adolescent protagonists Onyii and Ify are separated by war and used by the leaders of opposite sides, while they could represent the new generations working for a different future. The article analyzes the perspective adopted by Onyebuchi, who combines African futurism, climate fiction, SF and young adult literature tropes to write a Biafran War novel, where the harmful behaviors from the past are repeated in the cycles of time to the detriment of the future. In the center of the analysis is located the question of the impact the novel should have on the young adult reader, supposedly encouraged by the author to bring change into the patterns of thought underlying humanity’s recurring errors.