A New Cohort Joins the Circle: LéO Africa Institute Welcomes Its 2026 Fellows

Getting into the room was not easy. The 2026 intake followed one of the institute's most competitive selection processes to date, drawing over 3,600 applications from across the African continent. From that pool, fewer than 100 fellows were selected across all three programs. The numbers alone tell part of the story, but what struck those who went through the process was not how many were turned away. It was the extraordinary depth of talent, purpose, and promise in the applicant pool itself.

The new fellows were welcomed by institute staff and oriented by alumni who had walked the same path in recent years. Three alumni spoke about their experiences, offering the kind of grounded, personal testimony that no brochure can replicate.

Sameer Luyombo, a 2024 YELP fellow, opened with a candid observation about the nature of leadership. He told the incoming cohort that leadership, by its very nature, can be isolating. The responsibility to make decisions, to hold a vision, and to keep moving even when those around you are uncertain is not something that can always be shared. His answer to this reality was not to glamorise resilience or to pretend the weight does not exist. It was to build community deliberately.

" “Leadership can be lonely. To overcome this, leaders need to make community with other people in leadership, to understand the dynamics of leading and marshal the will to lead with courage.” — Sameer Luyombo, a 2024 YELP fellow

Sameer Luyombo

Sameer spoke warmly about the readings shared by the institute’s faculty during seminars, describing them as genuinely impactful on how he thinks about leadership. He continues to carry those lessons into his professional life, driving long-term growth and strategic planning at Taibah Schools.

Dr Irene Mutuzo, a 2024 Huduma Fellow, spoke about what the fellowship changed in her. She arrived with experience in civil service but left with a clarified sense of what public service should actually mean. Her message to the incoming fellows was direct: 

" “Work for the public good, and resist the cynicism that can settle in over years of institutional life.” — Dr Irene Mutuzo, a 2024 Huduma Fellow

She described the fellowship as a space where she learned to calibrate her goals, to work with both impact and focus, and to understand the power of community and giving back. It was, she said, where she found her purpose.

Dr Irene Mutuzo

Since completing the program, Irene has moved into digital psychology, working on the behavioural and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and building bridges between the field of AI and the discipline of psychology.

Patience Naamanya Kiden, a fellow from the inaugural 2025 Griots cohort, brought a different perspective. A practitioner in public policy advocacy and career diplomacy, she came from a world of data, evidence, and structured argument. The Griots Fellowship taught her something she had not expected to need: how to tell a story.

" “Storytelling is important in reshaping the narrative of Africa in the world.” — Patience Naamanya Kiden, Griot Fellow, Class of 2025

Policy knowledge, she explained, is only as powerful as the form in which it reaches people. Her fellowship gave her the tools to translate expertise into narrative, to take what she knew and make it land with audiences who might otherwise never engage with it. The stakes, in her view, go beyond professional communication.

Patience Naamanya

Awel Uwihanganye, co-founder of the LéO Africa Institute, welcomed the new fellows with both warmth and historical context. He traced the institute’s origins to his own experience as an Aspen Fellow, a program that transformed how he understood leadership and what it could look like on the African continent. LéO Africa, he explained, was the leadership challenge he undertook as a graduate of that fellowship: an institution built to do for African leaders what Aspen had done for him.

" “KAS has believed in our work since day one.” — Awel Uwihanganye, co-founder of the LéO Africa Institute

Awel used the occasion to express deep gratitude to the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Uganda, a partner whose support has spanned more than a decade of the institute’s work.

The evening also marked a significant institutional moment. Awel inducted Anna Reismann, the outgoing Country Director of KAS Uganda, as the very first Guardian of the Vision under the institute’s Africa Champions Network. It was a recognition of the friendship and partnership she had sustained with LéO Africa throughout her tenure in Uganda.

Awel addressing the fellows

" “The badge of Guardian of the Vision I receive from LéO Africa is extra weight on my shoulders as I go to Ethiopia to continue the good work we have done together in Uganda. Thank you very much for the honour, and for the extra weight.” — Anna Reismann

Anna Reismann spoke with visible pride about the growth she had witnessed in the LéO Africa network. She explained that KAS’s decision to partner across multiple fellowships was not incidental. It was rooted in a shared belief in the value of the work and in the understanding that transformation requires leadership across every sector of society, not just in government or business or civil society in isolation.

She argued that a network of leaders spread across disparate fields creates something uniquely powerful: people who can hold each other to account, carry shared values into different institutions, and support one another across the divides that often keep sectors separate.

Awel and Anna

The 2026 fellows begin their programs carrying the testimony of those who came before them. They were reminded, in the words of alumni and founders alike, that the real work of the fellowship is not just what happens in seminars or reading groups. It is what becomes possible when people who care about the same things find each other and choose to build together.