Hafsat Abdullahi

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.