Its 1909hrs here in Kaduna State, Nigeria and it has been a wonderful day with members of Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni of Nigeria in a face to face meet up tagged “The Impact Project”. I am really glad that the Young African Leadership Initiative is taking a whole different turn across Africa where the leaders of tomorrow the youths have woken up from their slumber.
For those of us who do not know about YALI, it is an initiative powered by the American Government to empower African youth. It is the signature effort to invest in the next generation of African Leaders. Nearly 1in3 Africans are between the ages of 10 and 24 and approximately 60 percent of Africa’s total population is below the age of 35.
The initiative launched by former President Barak Obama in 2010 to support young African leaders as they spur growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, and enhance peace and security across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Young African Leaders Initiative, or YALI, is not just a fellowship, or an online community, or a place to go for regional leadership training. YALI is all three.
This has led to the face to face meet up in Kaduna State University Multipurpose Hall today all to create impact and duplicate the knowledge gotten from the fellowship by these fellows where it is expected that all that is learnt is applied and also create room for networking with individual.
Mr. Daniels Akpan the YALI face to face network president Kaduna gave the welcome address afterwards, Ogola Lois Kange the Secretary of Mandela Washington Fellowship Association of Nigeria gave brief overview of what all the event “The Impact Project” is all about and what we will learn and stand to get at the end of the meeting.
We had different Mandela Fellows spoke in their area of expertise;
Dr. Aishatu Abubakar-Abdullateef – Building relationship and movment
Ogola Lois Kange - Collaboration Is The New Competition.
Tosin Austin - Enterpreneurial Education as a tool for reducing Unemployment among Youths.
Hauwa Liman - Building Successful Business Enterprise.
Saied Tafida - Responsive Governance: How to Make Money from Paying Taxes.
All these spoke persons did justice to these subject matters and I must say I learnt from all of them. And secondly from my observation women did all this today, so for you that is a woman that cries i cannot do it, you better rise up and take responsibility.
Questions where entertained which was given a favourable and convincing answers. The whole house was filled with high level of enthusiasm as room was giving for networking with different people in different fields.
I met two guys who had start up on app building and immediately I remembered steemit and the benefit they stand to tap from it if they put it into action in this awesome community. So we exchange business cards.
Afterwards, YALI RLC alumni Kaduna met for a brief meeting, in the persons of Chuks Clement (a steemian), Daniels Akpan, Yunus Abdul, Abdul A. and I had another stretched meeting to discuss on Projects to be executed.
Finally, I want to let you know the future of the world is Africa, and the movement starts from Nigeria.
I am proud to be an African
I am proud to be a Nigerian
I am proud to be YALI(AN)
I am proud to be a steemian.
Thanks for reading and visiting my blog.
I am me
Reference:
https://yali.state.gov/about/