Fast-Tracking Leaders: Educational Development and Africa's Growing Youth Leadership Pipeline (Poster 23)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Over the past decade, hundreds of educational initiatives have been established globally with the explicit mission of grooming a new generation of African leaders through leadership-focused schools, degree programs, scholarships, training institutes, and online learning communities. Yet, no significant research has examined this multibillion-dollar educational industry beyond the analysis of individual programs or national initiatives. This critical ethnographic study examines African youth leadership development transnationally, with a focus on organizational structures, pedagogical approaches, and participant experiences. This poster sketches initial findings from this ongoing study, which, to date, has collected data on 277 programs that: target African youth, offer educational training or professional development, and have goals of cultivating leaders who will contribute to African development; and interviewed and surveyed 240 youth participants. The poster presents a digital mapping tool created through the study, which offers an overview of the global ecosystem of African youth leadership-focused education development within and beyond Africa. The poster also summarizes key findings from interviews and survey responses of young African leaders, whose insights complicate the largely celebratory discourses surrounding leadership-oriented educational development, probing the leadership programs’ tendency toward elite-driven strategies, corporate leadership models, and foreign collaboration. The findings offer insight into the social impact of the pivot in international educational policy toward “positive youth development” as a catalyst for change in Africa and other parts of the world.

Author

• Krystal Strong, Rutgers University
  Presenting Author