Impact Stories & Blogs

By Priscilla Ruzibuka, Rwanda (Cohort 11) By the time I joined the YALI Regional Leadership Center East Africa for the life-changing leadership training, I was already running a children’s clothing brand Ki-pepeo (the Swahili word for butterfly.). You’d wonder why I chose butterflies; they start as ugly caterpillars that go through lots of life transformation to become beautiful and rare creatures! This is how I saw my business transform the lives of the women I work with and all the others that will join us in the years to come, impacting their lives beautifully and permanently. The YA...

By Pascal Mulindwa Bukuru, DRC (Cohort 2) Since a young age, I have been passionate about youth and how they can be change makers in their communities. I have been involved in coaching them on how to start, grow and scale social ventures. I started the Jenga Miradi Hub startup to promote this passion. I also worked with the German-funded Social Innovation Academy in Uganda, supporting the team to design, test and iterate the incubation model that they use. In addition to being a trainer of the academy’s mentors, I have supported 25 of their projects in the ideation process, business/finan...

By Joseph Ngugi Nyambura, Kenya (Cohort 7) Being a professional psychologist, I started by interning with Kenya Probation Services at Milimani High Court, Nairobi. I quit later to follow my desire of promoting entrepreneurial culture among youth as a tool to eradicate unemployment in Kenya. This desire was given a big boost by my training at the YALI RLC East Africa. I have also been so fortunate as to attend the Mandela Washington Fellowship and reap the full benefits of the larger YALI initiative. I am the founder and CEO of Cleanstar Limited, a soap manufacturing company. We manufacture...

Marius Gnalis-Rafai Central Africa Republic (Cohort 3) The history of Be-Africa Innovation Lab (Bailab) cannot be told without mentioning the YALI Regional Leadership Center East Africa. In 2007, I was appointed as Loan & Risk Analyst at the Commercial Bank Centrafrique (CBCA). During my four years with the bank, I reviewed thousands of loans requests, interacted with small and medium business owners and felt their motivations, their frustrations and their experiences. Through these interactions, I came to realize that informal management without any record keeping is one of the bigges...

By Ahumuza Ignatius, Uganda (Cohort 14) Born in a large family of 18 children in a small poverty-ridden village in Masindi, Uganda, my family depended on peasant farming for our livelihood. This automatically made my siblings and me farmers by birth, leaving us with no other career choices.   This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Backed by my past experiences as a son of a peasant farmer, I was inspired to start the Art Planet Academy in 2015 when I was just 19 years old. By then, the Academy was simply an initiative that promoted agriculture within educational institution...

By Joan Kanja (Kenya, Cohort 3)   My journey with the Center began on November 16th, 2015 when I enrolled as part of the third cohort. My experience at the Center was inspiring, and both humbling and exciting to know that I had been selected from almost 2,000 applicants. Meeting other like-minded young leaders from 14 countries across the region was one of the best parts of the program. Hearing the great things young people were doing in their communities to bring about social change renewed my faith in our generation and the future of our continent. The Center gave us an opportunity to b...

By Justine Nyaruri Abuga (Kenya, Cohort 6) Growing up I saw how my mother struggled to provide for us, and being from a humble background, she would cook using paraffin or firewood, and the smoke had debilitating effects on her health. As I grew older I grappled with the question of how to make it easier for my mother to prepare meals without harming her health. Upon graduating from university I set up the Ecobora Company which focuses on making fuel out of sawdust. Our solutions at the initial stages of setting up Ecobora were very simple: we would collect sawdust and mix it with clay soil...

By Abdu Adiel Mwimi, ‘Mr. Forward’ (Tanzania, Cohort 8)   When I walked through the YALI Regional Leadership Center East Africa doors, I was working with Miracle Corners Tanzania as a country director, and was the founder and manager of The Way Forward Foundation. I was also a part-time farmer growing vegetables on a small farm in Arusha, Tanzania. Besides all this, I had a passion for fashion, but it was limited to my choice of style.   While going through the first three weeks of the leadership program, my colleagues were in awe of my sense of fashion, and I slowly begun to toy wi...

By Vulcain Yengo (Republic of Congo, Cohort 1) Since a young age I have been passionate about entrepreneurship. At the age of 15 years, I started my first business selling household oil lamps, clothes, and juice on the streets of Brazzaville. While the business did fail due to continual rise in oil prices, my dream did not die with it. I always knew I had a heart for business, and I therefore set out to enhance my skills. In order to realize my dream and to empower other Africans to improve their economic power, through entrepreneurship I set out to the U.S. to pursue a Business Management ...

When young emerging leaders apply to the leadership program offered by YALI Regional Leadership Center East Africa, they are driven by a commitment to make a difference in their communities. My main motivation was to improve my leadership skills with the hope that my experience would enhance the work that I do with the disability community in Ethiopia. For over seven years I have been focused on strengthening collaboration and creating a united voice among disability-based organizations in Ethiopia. Through YALI, I saw an opportunity for me to improve my influence in the work that I do. As ...