Celebrating Ten Years of the Mandela Washington Fellowship: Young African Leaders Returning to Williamsburg and Charlottesville in Summer 2024

The Presidential Precinct is proud to announce its selection as an Institute Partner for the 2024 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.  Beginning in mid-June, the Precinct will host 25 of Africa’s bright, emerging Civic Engagement leaders for a six-week Leadership Institute, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship, the flagship program of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), empowers young African leaders through academic coursework, leadership training, mentoring, networking, professional opportunities, and local community engagement.  YALI was created in 2010 and supports young Africans as they spur economic growth and prosperity, strengthen democratic governance, and enhance peace and security across Africa.  Established in 2014, the Mandela Washington Fellowship is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2024.  Since its inception, nearly 6,500 young leaders from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa have participated in the Mandela Washington Fellowship.  The cohort of Fellows hosted by the Presidential Precinct will be part of a group of 700 Mandela Washington Fellows hosted at 28 educational institutions across the United States.

After their Leadership Institutes, Fellows will participate in the Mandela Washington Fellowship Summit, where they will take part in networking and panel discussions with each other and with U.S. leaders from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.  Following the Summit, up to 100 competitively-selected Fellows will participate in four weeks of professional development with U.S. non-governmental organizations, private companies, and government agencies.

Funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and implemented by IREX, Leadership Institutes will offer programs that will challenge, motivate, and empower young leaders from Africa to tackle the challenges of the 21st century.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2024, and the Presidential Precinct is proudly one of eight institutions who have hosted Fellows each year since the inception of the Fellowship. We will soon total 250 Fellows who have come to the Precinct with a bold vision and departed on a lifelong journey of impact for their community and our world. These 250 individuals represent a diverse and established group of lawyers, journalists, NGO leaders, doctors, professors, and more. Building on their shared experience of the Mandela Washington Fellowship at the Presidential Precinct, they embody a network of support for one another that time-and-again opens doors and creates resilience for tackling pressing global challenges.

2024 Fellows at the Presidential Precinct will begin their Fellowship at William & Mary, the second oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. From Williamsburg, they will move to Orange, Virginia for a multi-day residential workshop on constitution building at James Madison’s Montpelier. Finally, Fellows will travel from Orange to the University of Virginia – one of the country’s top three public universities – in the city of Charlottesville.

At the conclusion of these six weeks, all are welcome to attend the 2024 Africa Ideas Festival, to be held at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs Friday, July 26. Select media and community engagement opportunities will also be confirmed at a later date.

For additional information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship Leadership Institute at the Presidential Precinct, contact Drew Precious, Director of Communications (drew@presidentialprecinct.org) or visit https://presidentialprecinct.org/mwf/.

The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX.  For more information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship, visit mandelawashingtonfellowship.org and join the conversation at #YALI2024.

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