Robtel Neajai Pailey wins Ibrahim Fellowship to take up position at African Development Bank
IMI Senior Researcher Robtel Neajai Pailey has won an Ibrahim Leadership Fellowship to take up a position in the executive office of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
The fellowship programme, run by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, is designed to mentor future African Leaders. Three winning candidates take up positions in the AfDB, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa or the International Trade Centre (ITC) in Geneva, where they benefit from direct mentorship from the organisations’ current leaders.
The candidates were chosen from a pool of over 2,000 applicants.
Robtel is a Liberian academic and activist. She is currently completing post-doctoral research at ODID documenting the socio-economic development implications of crisis-induced return migration to Cameroon, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia and Niger. She will return to ODID to take up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship researching citizenship in Liberia following her stint at the AfDB.
Commenting on the new Fellows, Mo Ibrahim said on the foundation website: 'The programme provides a platform to cultivate a community of individuals who will rise to become Africa’s future inspirational leaders. The three will join a network of fellows who share a commitment to making a positive impact on the continent, contributing their skills and learning for a better Africa'.
The other new fellows were Oulimata Fall, Head of the Trade Promotion and Economic Intelligence Department at the Senegalese Export Promotion Agency, who will join the ITC, and Ndapiwa Segole, a public sector economist from Botswana who joined UNECA.