The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a flagship program of the U.S. department of state to support young African leaders. The program includes Entrepreneurship, and Public Administration tracks, the Staley School hosts a Civic Leadership Institute.
The Fellows come from diverse backgrounds and are doing incredible work to impact lives and transform their communities. In this series, former Fellow and now Staley School graduate research assistant, Chibuzor Azubuike, reflects on 2022 Fellows that share common work in education – a critical area of focus for Sub-Saharan Africa.
According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), over one-fifth of African children between the ages of 6 and 11 are not in school, while nearly 60% of youth between the ages of 15 and 17 are not enrolled. (Kaledzi 2022) It is this challenge that Sustainable Development Goal 4 addresses, which is quality education.
Educators as Fellows
In this vein, Jonathan Maka from Kinshasa, DRC has been teaching for seven years now, and he is currently working at the Academy of Science and Technology as an English teacher and coach. He spends time coaching and mentoring the youth in his community, especially those who are homeless or those whose families are unable to afford quality education. So far, he has motivated students who have dropped out of school to resume their education He is involved in an NGO named Silent Cry that supports orphans, girls especially, in coaching, and educational interventions focused on skill development including English language, sewing, arts, crafts, sports, and skill development to contribute to their future capacity for finding job opportunities.
Maka has been engaged throughout the Mandela Washington Fellowship experience, he stated, “The Mandela Washington Fellowship has influenced the way I approach my work in providing me with proper leadership skills and also in teaching me that I have to work on statistics and not only having a general view of the challenge that my community is facing.”
Investing in Infrastructure
Dorcas Elisha from Nigeria who works with community members to identify pressing educational needs and how to leverage their community assets in solving them. Dorcas described the shortage of qualified teachers, transportation: poor road network, insecurity, funding, and communications with locals as major challenges in doing her work. She says,
“Better understanding of my strengths and edges will help in influencing my leadership style and how best to approach challenges. My visit to some schools around has greatly influenced how I view students learning. This will impact the design and delivery of our programs. Her greatest takeaway from the Fellowship is understanding the power of community assets and leveraging on what we have at hand as a people to solve our problems.
While Dorcas focuses on increasing access to education through infrastructure building, Sandra turned her attention toward new technologies that would expand access to rural regions.
Sandra Nyika from Zimbabwe has more than four years of experience working in the education space. She is a co-founder of Jenesis Empowerment Trust and chairperson of Fundo App, a platform that seeks to provide access to quality education to learners from marginalized communities. She is an educator at Divaris Makaharis, a private school in the capital city of Zimbabwe. Sandra has worked to build on her experience as a teacher in remote areas of the country to build an app to respond to some of the gaps that exist for rural education. The app bridges the gap between urban and rural communities in terms of access to quality education as well as the integration of Information Communication Technology tools in the teaching and learning process.
She went on to state that, the Mandela Washington Fellowship has made her realize the need to establish proper systems within her initiative and also to address the root causes of the challenges being faced in our communities rather than addressing the symptoms of the problem.
Shifting a Culture Toward Education
Rahila from Niger serves as an English teacher in Safo which is a little rural area of her home community and a French lecturer at Maryam Abacha University. She says, “The challenges that I usually encounter are related to cultural obstacles, tradition, and social prejudices. For example, I explain the importance and the necessity of educating girls in nowadays life during the campaign in the villages and rural communities.”
Rahila’s greatest takeaway from the fellowship is her experience building her leadership network. A key goal of the Fellowship is the opportunity for Fellows and U.S. professionals and community members to build connections across culture, ideas, and communities.
Shifting cultural norms around is a task that spans generations. Rahila’s work in Niger will have impact – if not today – in the years ahead. Elkanah Kiprop has similarly focused his energy on education through one-on-one discussions with parents in the community.
Elkanah Kiprop from Kenya s a rural educator and a staunch believer in equal access to quality education. He has been equipping learners and their parents on the significance of educating children. For him, this includes a takeaway from his experience at K-State, specifically, a focus to bridge diversity, democracy and inclusivity gap in work and daily life.
Finally, David Niyigena from Rwanda, the founder of Opportunity Learning Development Access, (OLDA), which focuses on improving the quality of education through teacher professional development. His goal is to transform public schools into globally competitive by providing accessible transformative education to thousands of children to achieve their full potential. He stated that the concept of Leadership as Practice stood out for him and remains his greatest takeaway from the fellowship.
Through servings as educational advocates, building infrastructure, working on cultural change, and developing professionals and processes, the 2022 Mandela Washington Fellows are busy leading change across the continent. We will continue to profile their work in the next blog.
References
Kaledzi , I. (2022). Why the right to education remains a challenge in Africa. https://p.dw.com/p/45vUm
About the Author
Chibuzor Mirian Azubuike is a Ph.D. candidate in the leadership communication program at Kansas State University. She is also a Graduate teaching assistant where she co-teaches Culture and Context of Leadership. She has experience in community development, facilitating leadership trainings and forced migration studies. Her interests include humanitarian interventions, civic leadership, youth development women and migration, and civic engagement.
