This guest post was written by YALI Fellow Aichatou Tamba, a Senegalese national who is working in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as the Technical Advisor to the African Union Border Program at GIZ (African Union Office).

This summer marked the first year of the Washington Fellowship (now renamed Mandela Washington Fellowship) which is a component of the Young African Leaders Initiative (“YALI”) launched by President Obama in order to strengthen and invest in the next generation of African leaders.  From an applicant pool of over 50,000 young Africans between the ages of 25 to 35, the State Department selected five hundred individuals to attend six weeks of leadership training and mentoring in one of three areas:  public management, civic leadership and business entrepreneurship.  As the Technical Advisor to the African Union (“AU”) Border Program at GIZ, I was selected by the US/AU office in Addis Ababa to attend the public management track at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.…

Continue Reading What I Did This Summer: Reflections of a 2014 YALI Fellow