LéO Africa Newsletter, Q3 2026: Building Together for Impact
A Growing Network of Transformative Leaders, Connected, Inspired, and Building Together for Impact.
A Growing Network of Transformative Leaders, Connected, Inspired, and Building Together for Impact.
Dear friends, partners, and members of our growing network,
The third quarter of 2026 carried the Institute beyond its own walls and into some of the continent’s most important conversations. In July, we welcomed a new class of YELP fellows into the fold, a cohort already carrying the weight and wisdom of the work they do outside the fellowship. In August and September, we stood alongside Kenya’s Department for Foreign Affairs and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung at the inaugural Trust Summit in Nairobi, and joined the African School of Governance in Kigali for a forum asking whether Africa’s next chapter begins in its institutions or in its mindset.
Three very different rooms, one continuous thread. Each asked what it takes for African leaders to build with integrity, and each found a decade of the Institute’s work already speaking to that answer. We are honoured to have been part of all three, and we look ahead already to Seminar Two for our Huduma and YELP fellows in October, to the Griots Conference in December, and to the Annual Leaders Gathering that will close out our year.
A New Class, A New Chapter, YELP Welcomes Its 2026 Cohort
The Young and Emerging Leaders Project has officially welcomed its Class of 2026, a cohort arriving already carrying weight, wisdom and grit far beyond their years. The fellowship’s three seminar journey opened on 17 and 18 July at the Latitude Hotel in Kampala, with Seminar One themed The Foundation, Character, Courage, Purpose, and guided by Beverly Mutindi, herself a YELP Fellow from the Class of 2018 who now serves as Associate Faculty at the Institute.
The cohort spans Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya and Nigeria, and brings together lawyers, a magistrate, a sitting Member of Parliament, journalists, communications strategists, tax and energy policy professionals, software engineers, entrepreneurs and community builders, among them a founder who built a mobile app inside a refugee settlement to help others find services and hope.
“Every year, this moment reminds me why the fellowship exists. You look around the room and you see lawyers, technologists, farmers, legislators, all asking the same honest question, who am I really as a leader.”
Asiimwe Nelson · Programs Manager, LéO Africa Institute
Over the coming months, fellows will be pushed to examine the distance between the leader they present to the world and the person they actually are underneath it, and to build the kind of network that outlasts any single seminar.
The Trust Summit 2026, LéO Africa Stands With Nairobi’s Global Conversation on Trust
From 21 to 23 October 2026, Nairobi will host The Trust Summit under the theme Weaving Trust, Binding Strands for a Stronger Global Order. Co-convened by Kenya’s State Department for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, the Executive Office of the President, Strathmore University, the Open Government Partnership, UNDP Kenya, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Ford Foundation, the Summit responds to a global crisis of confidence. More than half the world’s population expresses little or no trust in government, and only 36 percent believe life will improve for the next generation.
LéO Africa Institute is proud to be associated with this initiative. Founded in 2012, the Institute exists to cultivate ethical, values based leaders who strengthen institutions from within, a conviction that mirrors the Summit’s own founding premise. The alignment runs deeper still on the question of youth. Only one in three young people globally say they trust their government, even as three in four Kenyans are under 35.
We are delighted to have actively participated in the Youth Dialogue on Trust in Nairobi on September 17, 2026.
Follow the conversation at #TrustSummit26
Resetting the African Mindset, LéO Africa Joins the African School of Governance in Kigali
On 25 and 26 August, Kigali hosted the inaugural Africa Mindset Reset Forum, a continental convening organized by the African School of Governance to ask whether institutions and economies can be transformed before the African mind is reset first. LéO Africa Institute was proud to join, bringing its voice, its fellows and its philosophy of leadership to the agenda.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Awel Uwihanganye represented the Institute as a speaker, joined by staff and select fellows. Both organizations share a founding premise, that Africa’s constraints are not primarily material. The continent holds an estimated 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves and the youngest population on earth, yet what has too often been missing is a generation of leaders who believe they are equipped and entitled to shape that potential on their own terms. The Institute calls this the work of agaciro, a Kinyarwanda concept of dignity, self worth and identity.
“Our confidence, our identity, and our capability are the true starting point of transformation.”
Awel Uwihanganye · Co-Founder and Chief Executive
The collaboration affirmed that the work the Institute has carried out since 2012 through Griots, Huduma, YELP and the Africa Champions Network sits at the center of a continental conversation now being convened at the highest levels.
Follow along at #MindsetReset #PanAfricanism
On the Horizon, Events to Watch
Explore All Newsletters
Browse our full archive of publications and stay informed on Africa's leadership landscape.
All Newsletters