By Peter Dadzie
The West African Young Leaders Fellowship (shortened as WAYLead Fellowship) is a project by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD – Ghana) for young adults across Anglophone West Africa. The objective of the project is to improve the quality of citizens’ participation in policy decision making and the development of the subregion.
The first cohort of the project who were trained for one year was made up of 20 fellows between 18 and 25 years old from Ghana, Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The fellows were given special training in areas such as self-leadership, political economy of African development, design thinking, leading change, communication skills, social media skills, resource mobilization, movement building and personal security.