About the Research
The Research
The African Youth Leadership Study is a transnational, multi-phase qualitative research project led by Dr. Krystal Strong. The project works to understand the convergence of educational interventions invested in developing African youth leadership in the contemporary moment.
Beginnings
Since 2006, Dr. Krystal Strong has conducted over four years of ethnographic research on university student politics and activism in southwestern Nigeria. Her fieldwork led to long-term relationships with a cohort of young leaders throughout Nigeria. Now an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, she is currently completing a book manuscript based on this research, titled Political Training Grounds: Schools and the Rise of Youth Power in Post-Military Nigeria. Anecdotally, this work revealed many students and activists participating in leadership initiatives directed explicitly towards African youth.
Unable to identify existing research that examines contemporary leadership development programs for African youth, in the Spring of 2016, Dr. Strong invited then-Master’s student Christiana Kallon to begin an exploratory project determining the scale and scope of African youth-focused leadership initiatives around the world. The pilot study revealed more than 150 programs, the vast majority of which were established in the past 10 years alone, and launched the present study.
Where are these leadership initiatives located and who is participating? How do they conceptualize leadership and development? What are these initiatives seeking to accomplish?
Mapping the Landscape
Guided by the pilot study, so far, the research team has identified over 180 unique leadership initiatives for African youth around the world. We continue to populate our database of initiatives and have mapped their locations and organizational features. We see a pattern of pedagogical and organizational approaches, discourses around leadership and development, and ideologies concerning social change across these initiatives.
Understanding youth experiences
In the current qualitative phase of this research, we seek to understand the leadership stories of young African leaders, and their experiences in leadership programs. We are distributing an online survey for participants and alumni of these initiatives. We are simultaneously conducting interviews with youth.
What are youth’s experiences with leadership initiatives, and why do they choose to participate in them?
What are youth’s perspectives on leadership and development in Africa?
What role do youth see themselves playing in social change?
Website
The intent of this website, in its current iteration, is: (1) to share with colleagues, collaborators, and participants how we understand our project and its process, (2) to build a collective knowledge of leadership initiatives targeting African youth, and (3) to provide and centralize access points for participation in the research.
This research and its web presence are inherently dynamic. As the research evolves and the site’s content, design, and discourse change, we will archive previous versions, which you can find here.
Institutional SUPPORT
This project has received support from the University of Pennsylvania. The principal investigator, Krystal Strong, Ph.D. is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. The project was institutionally reviewed and approved (IRB#829451, Expiration Date: 03 May 2019).