After suspending its recruitment campaign in 2020 due to the Covid crisis, the French-African Foundation is relaunching and expanding its Young Leaders program, which aims to identify and bring together committed young African and French talents who are driving projects and want to invest in building a shared future.
With three times as many participants, new program modalities, and operational recommendations, 2021 will see a ramp-up of the program, for which the call for applications will close on March 21.
The French-African Foundation aims to contribute to the emergence of a new generation of French and African leaders to take on the economic, social, and political challenges of our time. Each year, it brings together a group of Young Leaders selected from among those with the potential to play an important role in Franco-African relations.
Faced with the challenges ahead, amplified by the Covid crisis, this flagship program of the Foundation is scaling up by tripling its membership. This year, following the selection process, 100 African and French Young Leaders, aged 28 to 40, will be selected, with gender parity taken into account.
The call for applications, launched on February 17, will close on March 21, and the composition of the 2021 class will be announced in May. The winners will be divided into two groups of 50, each participating in a five-day high-level participatory session in France or Senegal on the theme of resilience, using a mirror approach that allows for a comparison of French and Senegalese perspectives.
These exchanges will culminate in spring 2022 in a report containing operational recommendations for national and international decision-makers in the public and private sectors. For 2021, the Young Leaders program will also include a focus on "Sport & Development" in order to engage Franco-African communities mobilized around this theme and highlight the economic and social challenges of sport's contribution to development.
Source: Press release