Deadline: April 28, 2024
Applications are open for the African Union (AU) Digital and Innovation Fellowship 2024. AfriLabs is currently recruiting 16 exceptional African tech talents and innovators to participate in the African Union Digital and Innovation Fellowship Program. The Fellows will be deployed to various departments/organs in the African Union to identify the key areas that can be strengthened by digitization, technology, and innovation.
The African Union Digital and Innovation Fellowship Program is a robust 12-month program which aims to identify and deploy highly competent tech innovators from the African continent to units and organs within the African Union headquarters as ‘resident fellows’ to understand the system within those units, identify data management challenges within the systems and solve the challenges identified by co-creating and building innovative tailor-made products and processes that improve data management processes and the overall work of the AU, while ensuring the sustainability of the developed products and processes post the fellowship timeline, by strengthening the internal capacity of the AU staff within those units.
Benefits
- Participate in several capacity building training that will be facilitated by top experts from the African innovation ecosystem.
- Receive mentorship support from experienced industry experts drawn from the AfriLabs community.
- Network and benefit from several peer-to-peer learning opportunities.
- Receive monthly stipends throughout the period of the Fellowship.
- Embark on several all-expense-paid trips to ecosystem events, onboarding/offboarding, study/learning tour, etc.
- Attend a grand graduation ceremony where certificates will be awarded to fellows.
- Be recognized as a fellow/alumni of the African Union Digital and Innovation Fellowship Program.
- During the Fellowship, all fellows’ travel expenses for deployment to Addis Ababa, events, learning tour, offboarding, etc. will be fully covered by the Fellowship.
Eligibility
- Be based in Africa and must be a National of an African Union member state;
- Be under the age of 34 prior to the time of application;
- Hold a tertiary education degree or its equivalent;
- Have the capacity to gather comprehensive information on complex problems or situations, and the ability to evaluate and analyze information accurately in order to identify key issues and proffer solutions;
- Have experience and technical know-how in designing innovative technology products/solutions;
- Be available to travel to participate in an induction workshop;
- Be available and willing to dedicate 12 months. Fellows will be required to take a break from current obligations and relocate to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
- Applicants who speak more than one AU official language (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili) are strongly advised to apply.
Application
- At the close of the application window, all eligible applications will be assessed by independent reviewers and top scorers will be picked for the next stage of the selection process as finalists.
- Finalists will undergo rounds of interviews by the AU departments/organs and the best 16 will be confirmed as fellows. Selected fellows will be mandated to attend the Fellows Induction Workshop and a virtual pre-deployment training before traveling to Addis Ababa and to be deployed to the AU departments/organs.
For more information, visit AU Digital and Innovation Fellowship.
