“Last summer, President Obama made a triumphal visit to Kenya and declared that ‘Africa is on the Move,’ praising the spirit of entrepreneurship. In fact, Africa accounts for seven of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world, with Ethiopia on top,” writes Richard Nadworny ’82 in a VPR commentary.
One of Obama’s efforts to support the growth of the spirit of entrepreneurship in Africa is the Young African Leaders Initiative, or YALI, writes Nadworny. “The Mandela Fellowship brings Africans to the U.S. and places them at various universities to study business and entrepreneurship, public management, and civic leadership. Last summer I had the pleasure of teaching a part of this initiative at Dartmouth College,” he writes.
“But to increase exposure to this program in 2015, Obama launched a number of Regional Learning Centers to bring that same experience to Africans, in Africa,” he says. “Together with Dartmouth’s Dickey Center for International Understanding, I’ve had the extreme good fortune to participate in one of the first centers in Nairobi, Kenya. From December through April, I’m teaching cohorts of young professionals on how to use Human Centered Design to innovate, launch new startups, and inspire new initiatives in the companies and NGOs where they presently work. In short, we’re trying to bring a little bit of Dartmouth to Africa.”
Listen to the full commentary, broadcast 2/1516 on VPR.
