Archives: Young Leaders

Leadership is measured not only by the positions one holds, but by the lives one transforms. Across Africa, a new generation of young leaders is redefining what it means to serve, influence, and create lasting change. Among those shaping this future is Jemaimah Akiteyi, whose unwavering commitment to youth empowerment, gender equality, and community development has earned her recognition as the Young African Leaders Summit (YALS) Young Leader of the Month for August 2026.

A passionate Ghanaian youth leader, development practitioner, and United Nations Volunteer, Jemaimah has dedicated her work to ensuring that young people are not merely beneficiaries of development, but active architects of it. Her leadership reflects the conviction that meaningful progress is achieved when young people are equipped with knowledge, empowered with opportunity, and entrusted with responsibility.

As a UNFPA Youth Leaders (YoLe) Fellow, Jemaimah has worked at the intersection of youth advocacy, education, public health, and social inclusion. Through strategic partnerships with organisations including UN Volunteers, UNICEF, Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), Curious Minds Ghana, and Child Rights International, she has contributed to initiatives focused on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), child protection, digital advocacy, civic participation, and community engagement.

Her work extends beyond programme implementation. She has become a trusted advocate for creating safe, inclusive spaces where young people can engage in informed dialogue, build confidence, and develop the leadership skills necessary to influence decisions affecting their lives. Whether facilitating educational campaigns, supporting community-based initiatives, or amplifying youth voices through digital platforms, Jemaimah has consistently demonstrated that sustainable development begins by investing in people.

Through these initiatives, she has directly impacted more than 10,000 adolescents and young people, empowering them with knowledge, mentorship, and opportunities to become informed leaders and responsible citizens. Her contribution exemplifies a leadership model rooted in service, empathy, collaboration, and measurable social impact.

At the Young African Leaders Summit, we believe that leadership is not defined by status or recognition, but by integrity, innovation, inclusion, and a commitment to advancing the common good. Our mission is to identify and celebrate young Africans who embody these principles while driving transformative change within their communities and beyond.

Jemaimah’s journey reflects these values in remarkable ways.

She has demonstrated that leadership begins with service, choosing to invest her time and expertise in addressing issues that directly affect the wellbeing of young people. Her work champions inclusive leadership, ensuring that adolescent girls, young women, and marginalised youth are represented, heard, and empowered. Through collaboration with national and international development partners, she has shown the importance of partnerships in achieving sustainable impact, while her advocacy continues to inspire a generation of young Africans to become active participants in shaping their societies.

Her achievements serve as a reminder that Africa’s greatest resource is not found beneath its soil, but within the potential of its young people. By empowering others to lead, challenging harmful social norms, and promoting equitable access to knowledge and opportunities, Jemaimah is helping build communities that are healthier, more resilient, and better prepared for the future.

As the YALS Young Leader of the Month for August 2026, we celebrate not only Jemaimah’s accomplishments, but also the values she represents: purpose-driven leadership, service to humanity, collaboration, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to creating positive change.

Her story is an inspiration to young leaders across the continent, demonstrating that genuine leadership is measured by the opportunities created for others, the voices amplified, and the lasting impact left behind.

Congratulations, Jemaimah Akiteyi, on this well-deserved recognition. The Young African Leaders Summit is honoured to celebrate your leadership and your continued contribution towards building a more inclusive, empowered, and prosperous Africa.

“Empowering young people is not simply about preparing the leaders of tomorrow. It is about recognising and supporting the leaders who are already transforming Africa today.” – Dr Emmanuel Addo, CEO – YALS

Connect with Jemaimah Akiteyi:
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemaimah-akiteyi-66739724b/

When the Marburg virus struck Rwanda in 2024, the world watched with familiar anxiety. But inside the isolation wards, one young nurse did not wait for instructions from Geneva or Washington. Jacques Kwibuka stepped forward, took command of the evacuation team at the Rwanda Biomedical Center, and moved patients with the precision of a field commander. He was barely out of his undergraduate nursing degree.

That moment, cold, urgent, and unforgiving, was not an accident. It was the culmination of a life spent reading the silent crises that others overlook.

Meet Mr Jacques Kwibuka, the YALS Young Leader of the Month for July 2026. The title is fitting, but it barely captures the weight of what this twenty something Rwandan has already built, dismantled, and rebuilt in the name of a continent that too often waits for saviours from elsewhere.

His story begins not in boardrooms or foreign embassies, but in the uncomfortable spaces between data and despair. While still a nursing student, he watched his peers drift away from the profession, worn down by poor conditions and weaker support. He saw patients receive care that was technically correct but humanly hollow. His response was not to complain, but to organise. He founded the Rwanda Student Nurses Association and co-founded the Nursing and Midwifery Students and Early Career Professionals Network. Today, as president of the association, he has turned it into a national force for professional dignity, arguing that Africa will never achieve universal health coverage until its own health workers are cherished, not expendable.

But his gaze was always wider than the hospital ward. Pouring over epidemiological reports, he noticed a quieter, more stubborn epidemic: teenage pregnancies climbing year after year, HIV stubbornly persisting among adolescents, and mental health disorders rising without a single national safety net for young people. The statistics were not abstract. They were his contemporaries, his neighbours, his future. In 2020, he founded Informed Future Generations, a youth led organisation that does not preach or patronise. It equips young Rwandans with the truth about their bodies, their minds, and their choices. It speaks in Kinyarwanda and English, in villages and WhatsApp groups, because stigma does not respect official languages.

That same analytical clarity now drives his work on a different frontier: the digital one. In partnership with the Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University, Mr Kwibuka is coordinating a research project that aims to decolonise digital design. It is a bold, almost audacious ambition to ensure that the platforms used by African children are not just translated versions of Western models, but are built from African realities, with African safety and African agency at their core. It is, in his words, about who gets to decide what safe looks like.

What makes Mr Kwibuka profoundly African, and profoundly global at the same time, is his refusal to specialise in one problem. He is a registered nurse, an MBA and MPPM candidate, a certified consultant, a holder of the Intore cultural titles that root him in Rwandan warrior tradition, and a trained civic educator with military discipline. This is not a scattered CV. It is a deliberate architecture. He understands that poverty, disease, illiteracy, and digital exclusion are not separate crises; they are the same crisis wearing different masks. Leadership, for him, means being fluent in all their languages.

His recognition this month by the Young African Leaders Summit is not a celebration of resume length. It is an acknowledgement of a deeper truth: that the future of global health, education, and governance will not be decided in New York or London. It will be decided in places like Rwamagana, where a young nurse turned a dormitory conversation into a national movement, where a cultural warrior turned self reliance into a lesson in dignity, where a researcher turned colonial digital models into a call for liberation.

Jacques Kwibuka does not speak of himself as a hero. He speaks of duty. But in a world that too often confuses performance with purpose, his example is a quiet detonation. He reminds us that the most powerful leaders are not those who seek the microphone, but those who spend their twenties reading reports, organising peers, and standing between their people and preventable death.

“Leadership is not about titles,” he says. “It is about analysing the cracks in your community and having the courage to fill them yourself.”

That is the African leadership the world needs to see. Not the kind that waits for permission. The kind that builds, evacuates, heals, and codes all before breakfast.

And it is already here

The Young African Leaders Summit (YALS) is proud to name Zimbabwean clinical researcher and mental health pioneer Tanatswa Amanda Chikaura as our Young Leader of the Month for June.

Operating at the critical intersection of grassroots intervention, advanced clinical research, and global health policy, Ms Chikaura represents the caliber of systemic changemakers YALS seeks to amplify, those bridging the gap between world class academic inquiry and lived community realities. Her tireless dedication to promoting mental health and wellbeing among children, adolescents, and youths is reshaping the landscape of psychiatric care across sub Saharan Africa.

As the Founder and Director of the Ndinewe Foundation based in Harare, Zimbabwe, Ms Chikaura spearheads a dynamic, youth driven initiative designed to deliver scalable mental health support networks, educational resources, and targeted advocacy campaigns. Her work addresses critical, long standing gaps in community based healthcare infrastructure, effectively empowering young people to prioritize and access psychological well being.

Her exceptional contributions to global health and social development have earned her profound international acclaim. Ms Chikaura was selected by the United Nations Youth Office as a UN Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), positioning her at the forefront of contemporary African leadership. Her frontline expertise is further backed by her status as an Orygen Global Youth Mental Health Fellow, alongside professional memberships with both Cambridge Neuroscience and the Zimbabwe Psychological Association.

Beyond her grassroots advocacy, Ms Chikaura is a highly decorated scholar. A graduate with a BSc Hons in Psychology from the University of Zimbabwe, she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, supported by the prestigious Postgraduate Beit Cambridge and Cambridge Africa Changemakers Scholarships. Her doctoral research investigates the complex intersections of autism, trauma, mental health, and suicide prevention, aiming to translate complex clinical insights into culturally specific, actionable healthcare strategies.

Her multi layered impact has been recognized by some of the world’s most prestigious awarding bodies. Ms Chikaura is a recipient of the The Diana Award, the highest honor a young person can receive for social action and humanitarian efforts, established in memory of Princess Diana and supported by both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex. Domestically, her excellence has been celebrated with the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Zimbabwe Honouree title, the Ignite Youth People’s Choice Mental Health Award, and the National Mental Health Award.

Through a dual approach that combines localized community engagement with high level academic research, Ms Chikaura continues to challenge systemic inequities, pushing youth perspectives into rooms where global health decisions are made.

Each month, YALS spotlights an exceptional individual who is redefining leadership for Africa’s next generation. Tanatswa Amanda Chikaura was chosen for June because her trajectory proves that academic rigor is a powerful tool for social justice, and that sustainable development is impossible without mental health inclusion.

We congratulate Tanatswa Amanda Chikaura on this well deserved recognition and look forward to the vital conversations her work will continue to spark across the continent and beyond.

Do You Know a Young Leader Transforming Africa?

The Young African Leaders Summit thrives on celebrating extraordinary youth who are driving tangible social, economic, and political change across the continent. If you know an exceptional young leader whose impactful work, innovation, or advocacy deserves global recognition, we want to hear their story.

Help us amplify the voices shaping Africa’s future by nominating them for our upcoming Young Leader of the Month spotlight.

The Young African Leaders Summit (YALS) is proud to name Nigerian performance poet and activist Hafsat Abdullahi as our Young Leader of the Month for May 2026.

Known globally as Havfy, she represents the intersection of art, advocacy, and influence that YALS seeks to amplify across the continent. At 27, her work already spans the UN, the GRAMMY Recording Academy, and grassroots communities often left out of global conversations.

The selection reflects a year in which Havfy’s poetry and advocacy reached new platforms, from the UN Security Council to TEDx stages. With an audience of over one million followers, she has used verse to unpack issues facing women, girls, and young people in underrepresented communities.

Her approach is direct. She takes subjects often discussed in policy briefs and reframes them as human stories, making them accessible, urgent, and impossible to ignore.

Ms Abdullahi serves as a United Nations Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals and a Global Youth Leader for Education with the Global Partnership for Education. She is also a member of the GRAMMY Recording Academy.

Her advocacy has brought her into collaboration with UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank, UNAIDS, USAID, and Pediatric AIDS. Through performance and partnership, she has pushed youth perspectives into rooms where decisions are made.

Beyond humanitarian work, she has worked with brands including Coca-Cola, Jagermeister, CFAO, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank, Mavin Records, and Indomie, demonstrating how creative leadership can engage both institutions and industry.

Born in Nigeria, Havfy is a multi award winning poet and creative visionary who describes her mission as seeking to ignite minds, stir consciousness, and inspire transformation, changing the world, one metaphor at a time.

Each month, YALS spotlights a leader who is redefining what influence looks like for Africa’s next generation. Havfy was chosen for May because her work proves that storytelling is strategy and that a poem can be policy.

We congratulate Hafsat Abdullahi on this recognition and look forward to the conversations she will start next.