USAID's Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Centers are embarking on a new phase of providing young African women and men with the skills to catalyze economic, political, and social change in their communities, their countries, and their continent.
USAID is launching the new YALI Legacy Localization initiative, which is designed to harmonize operations among the four YALI regional centers located in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa under an umbrella organization called "YALI Africa." As part of USAID's larger localization effort, this work will emphasize building relationships and partnerships with local entities, including potential investors, collaborators, and alumni.
In addition, the new partnership will expand leadership training program opportunities. It will prioritize a focus on enhancing the diversity among participants through recruitment and overall operations - particularly to include more women, rural youth, and underrepresented populations. The partnership will harness its wealth of experience in international development to foster the systems necessary for advancing critical goals under YALI Africa.
Since 2015, the USAID-supported YALI centers have collaborated with higher education institutions and the private sector to equip young leaders with the skills to catalyze economic, political, and social change in their home countries and regions based on three programmatic areas of business, civic engagement, and public management. These centers have graduated more than 24,000 leaders from every country in sub-Saharan Africa and represent a diversity of language, culture, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Many of the YALI graduates are now in leadership roles in their communities and their countries as elected government officials and as international activists calling for social change.
