Welcome, Mandela Washington Fellows!

Albert Muragijimana is the founder of Amasimbi African Adventures, a company that specializes in travel and tourism. As an innovator, Albert has authored several short stories that teach wildlife and encourage children to read. Albert holds a bachelor’s degree in Entrepreneurship with Education and has five years of experience in entrepreneurship, education, and community development. He was the recipient of the Spark Business Plan award and Ministry of Youth award in 2015, in recognition of his innovation for promoting domestic tourism. Currently, he is a workforce readiness officer for a USAID-funded project known locally as Twiyubake, where he focuses on financial literacy, saving with education, work readiness, and micro-enterprise development training. Upon completion of the Fellowship, Albert plans to replicate lessons learned through a mobile mentorship academy as well as engage the networks formed to continue his business and so create more economic opportunities for youth.

Emile Uwezowamungu has over seven years' experience in entrepreneurship and skills development for youth empowerment in particular. Nowadays, Emile works as an executive director for a nonprofit, youth-led organization where his focus is to plan, recruit, lead, supervise, control, administrate, and fundraise for projects. He is also a founder and lead consultant at Innova Group, The Social Innovation Incubator, where he coaches and supports the youth in his community for research, advocacy campaigns and projects running from capacity building and partnership mobilization to African youth initiatives.  

Emile is an engineer from the University of Burundi, where he focused on Civil Engineering. He changed his career and became a consultant and community activist after realizing the highest need in Burundi involved supporting the youth in entrepreneurship and social innovation for job creation. After the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Emile plans to continue his work in social entrepreneurship, leadership, and organizational skills development. 

Gisela Masika has been operating her own school for about three years. She works for the school as finance and administration manager. She also works at the Center for Agricultural Development as chief accountant. Gisela holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Finance from Tumaini University, Tanzania. She wants to empower children from her local community with high-quality education from nursery to primary school level so that they can compete well in their higher learning studies. Through empowering children in this way, Gisela believes that Tanzania will have a generation that is well educated and this will improve the living standard of their families.

After completion of Mandela Washington Fellowship, Gisela plans to start a secondary school, which will offer secondary education to girls, especially those who come from marginalized families. From this perspective, the school will provide services to a community while generating income for her family.

Ibrahim Seini was introduced to Information Technologies in 2007, and has been developing marketing tools for numerous companies ever since. Over the years, Ibrahim has been able to adapt his skills to the latest technologies, and those most wanted on the African market, such as graphic design, web design, 3D modeling, video editing, data mining, software developing, and mobile applications.

In 2013, Ibrahim developed the concept of free education through mobile devices. He and a team of young local entrepreneurs promoted and distributed the initial app samples, thereby successfully introducing and equipping 4,800 children from private schools with a fun educational mobile application based on the school program. Children from the age of three responded positively by getting their homework done and raising their school grades. With these results, Ibrahim is looking to go nationwide with the project and hopes to raise national literacy levels.

John Njagu has more than 10 years’ experience as a filmmaker in Zimbabwe. He is the co-founder and creative director of a company called Thinking Films. He has won several awards in his field, including the best director at the American International Film Festival in 2011. John runs a training program for school leavers who have an interest in filmmaking, thus giving them the power to communicate through the medium of film. He also teaches them skills in front of and behind the camera.

John has been influential in developing the business aspect of the arts in Zimbabwe by making the commercially successful film ‘Lobola’ in 2010. ‘Lobola’ sold 100,000 DVD copies in the first two months of release. On completion of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, John plans to return to Zimbabwe and continue working to improve and enhance the skills pool of local filmmakers.

Lydie Hakizimana has 10 years of experience in various fields of education and in publishing, in particular. Currently, Lydie is the CEO of Happy Hearts, a preschool that is providing quality education to children between the ages of 18 months and six years old. She is also the co-founder and owner of Drakkar Ltd, a publishing house that serves 3,000 schools in Rwanda.

Lydie is the chairperson of the Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs and a board member of the Private Sector Federation of Rwanda. Upon completion of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Lydie plans to open a second school in Africa and continue to publish books in her local language in order to contribute to the promotion of a culture of reading in Rwanda. Lydie is a certified Montessori teacher and a proud wife and mother of three children.

Madeleine Sy is a highly motivated and reliable managing director at Group Mondial Tours. She studied Accounting and Finance in the UK. She has been managing and developing the Group's multiple activities in the tourism, catering, logistics, and travel industries for three years. Recently, she made great changes in her work environment by setting a clear overall vision at top-management level, providing a clear focus for the defined activities and objectives of the local entities. As part of her work, she has developed the Group’s tourist site to be one of Guinea's favourite destinations. She has accomplished an eco-tourist camp and was able to distribute wealth among the community and the villagers around the site by remunerating more than 50 workers. Upon completion of this program, Madeleine’s ambition is to make her company more efficient, profitable, and socially conscious as a regional player in their field of activity.

Obianuju Egbuna is the CEO and founder of Joppa Montessori School, an educational center offering quality childcare and top-notch early childhood educational services to children aged 12 years and below in Ughelli Metropolis, Delta State, Nigeria. She has over 10 years' experience with children, having worked as a caregiver, a class teacher, and a school administrator/manager for several private schools. Obianuju holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology, a post-graduate diploma in Education and is currently undergoing a master's degree in Education Administration. She is the pioneer and host of 'Solutions', an annual program that offers basic practical computer education and hands-on vocational training to teenage children living in orphanages. Obianuju plans to establish and run the first information and communication technology-based private vocational college in Delta State, which will offer students certification courses and internship opportunities at a reduced cost.

Peter W. Nawa has over five years of work experience in the private sector, four years having been spent at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Zambia as an auditor. Currently, he is co-founder of a startup called Butali Readers and Writers Studio, which is a publishing company that aims to provide high-quality and affordable publishing services. He is passionate about promoting Zambian books and writers, hence the creation of the website zambianbooks.com. He is also a blogger, and the author of a book titled Hired - Find the Job, Keep the Job and Quit the Job. Peter holds a master's degree in Globalization, Business and Development from the University of Sussex and is a qualified chartered accountant. When he returns from the Mandela Washington Fellowship, he intends to implement the knowledge acquired, and use the experiences and networks developed to ensure that his startup succeeds, and will continue to promote Zambian books and writers.

Holiniaina Rakotoarisoa has more than five years’ experience in local inclusive development, especially social inclusion and participation of people with disabilities through the Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) program in Antananarivo. She is the executive director and founder of Merci NGO, where she currently applies the best of her knowledge and skills in the management and development of the organization and its programs. She is vice president of the National Federation of Women with Disabilities in Madagascar, where she does volunteer work in fighting for the gender equality and rights of women and girls with disabilities in the community. Holiniaina holds a master’s degree in English studies from the University of Antananarivo, and has been trained in social entrepreneurship at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in India. Upon completing the Mandela Washington Fellowship, she plans to continue extending local inclusive development and CBR throughout Madagascar.

Shylet Chanhwa owns a kindergarten school called ABC Play Pre-School in Nampula, Mozambique where she has worked as a director and English teacher for two years. Her aim is to improve education and poverty in Mozambique. She believes in teaching children when they are very young and she concentrates more on infant education. Shylet did an honors degree in English Language Teaching at Universidade Pedagogica in Maputo, Mozambique and has been teaching English for over five years. She also did a course in Kindergarten School Management in February 2016. Upon completion of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Shylet plans to continue educating children and vulnerable orphans, in particular, making the kindergarten school grow to primary, secondary and even university level. She would also like to further her own education.

Glad Mabele has more than nine years’ business and entrepreneurship experience, four of which have been dedicated to publishing child-authored books. He founded Bala Books Creations to enable children between the ages of 7 and 18 to author their own autobiographies. His focus is on initiating, planning, and facilitating children’s book-writing programs in schools and libraries. He also volunteers in his local community’s primary schools, where he teaches aspects of language literacy and writing books. He's won awards for the Township Entrepreneur and the National Small Business of the Year. Glad qualified in Socio-Economic and Social Entrepreneurship Studies from the University of Johannesburg, and Business Development Studies from the Gordon Institute of Business Science (University of Pretoria), where he focused on emerging social enterprise management and development. Upon completion of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Glad plans to continue his work in developing skilled young writers and reducing language barriers.