Year 6-Quarter 3 Report: YALI Regional Leadership Center, Southern Africa

The program provides leadership training and networking opportunities to youth between the ages of 18 and 35. Africa is a youthful continent with up to 60% of its population below the age of 35, presenting many challenges but also bountiful opportunities for the continent and YALI plays a catalyst role to harness Africa's leadership and development potential. The YALI RLC-SA program started on 14 August 2015 and will end on 13 August 2023, according to the Cooperative Agreement, No. AID-674-A-15-00011. The Center is hosted by the University of South Africa's Graduate School of Business Leadership (Unisa SBL) in collaboration with a growing number of African and international partners. YALI RLC-SA serves as the regional hub for 14 Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, eSwatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The Center provides transformational learning that enhances leadership skills and creates networks for young people in the southern Africa region. The vision statement of YALI RLC-SA is to have a Southern African region led by critical, innovative, and responsible leaders. The mission statement is to build a generation of diverse, professional, and innovative young African leaders who are ethical and skilled in the management of private businesses, civic organizations, and public resources. The approved objectives of the RLC-SA during the Extension Period are to train 2,680 participants on the YALI Programme, support alumni through a select number of mentorships, internships, and grant opportunities, strengthen existing and create networking opportunities and platforms for dialogue and collaboration of alumni and youths from across the southern Africa region, promote sustainability of the RLC-SA through raising cash and/or in-kind contributions, testing and scaling up revenue-generating and self-funding programmes, and institutionalisation of the RLC-SA within Unisa. The five key values underpinning YALI RLC-SA are collaboration, inclusiveness, innovation, integrity, and diversity. The Center is located at the Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership and serves as the regional hub for 14 Southern African countries. In the quarter under review, the RLC-SA graduated 331 participants from the Online Cohort 11 program, representing a throughput of 78%, which is an improvement of 6% from 72.1% throughput achieved for Cohort 10. The Center continues to find innovative ways of enhancing engagement levels for its Online Program delivery, including guest sessions and masterclasses, which are proving to be popular among participants. Recruitment drives were conducted for Online Cohort 12, Online Cohort 13 Portuguese, the YALI Africa Wide training, and for the Education Changemakers in-residence program. The delivery of the Education Changemakers Cohort 2 has since been postponed to year 7. The RLC-SA closed a call for applications for the Mastercard Foundation grants targeting alumni who are creating sustainable jobs through their initiatives and businesses. The selection process will be finalized in the next quarter. The RLC-SA continues to source for partnerships in both the public and private sectors to help sustain its core programs. The Center's approach is geared towards self-reliance, making sure that alumni impact is sustained over time by building partnerships and mobilizing resources to keep alumni connected and engaged with themselves, the Center, and potential partners.