Posted by Join Us in Championing a New Kind of Leadership
We are equipping a diverse community of builders with the capacity to positively transform society.
The Acumen Fellowship is an intensive leadership development program for individuals who are solving problems of poverty and making progress on creating a world based on dignity. 
The Acumen West Africa Fellows Program brings together exceptional leaders from across West Africa (Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia) who are daring to embrace the difficult journey of social change. Over the course of the year, the Fellows will come together to learn with–and from–each other. As a deeply bonded cohort, they will engage with a curriculum that is based on practical skills and character, geared towards action and grounded in the value of moral leadership. After they finish the first year of the Fellowship, the Fellows join our global community called The Foundry.
To learn more, visit https://fellowship.acumenacademy.org/west-africa.
ABOUT ACUMEN ACADEMY
Acumen Academy is a university, reimagined—offering anyone, anywhere access to the training they need to be effective agents of change. As the world’s first and largest global school for social change, we are unleashing entrepreneurial moral leadership by making the knowledge, expertise, and resources of Acumen and its trusted community widely available and accessible. Acumen Academy blends the best of online and offline learning to build the practical skills needed to achieve social change. Our communities are locally rooted in the change they are driving, yet globally connected in learning, collaborating, challenging, and supporting each other. The Acumen Academy team, its more than 1300 Fellows, and Accelerator Alumni, and 500,000+ course takers represent a global ecosystem of learners and doers, ready to think differently, learn collaboratively, and build a more just and inclusive world.
Acumen Academy is located at
18 Sikiru Alade Oloko Cresc
Lekki Phase 1, Lagos, Nigeria
Tel: +234 9058420307
WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
West Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies– yet it will require a different type of leadership to ensure this growth is felt by all. Our Fellows are emerging leaders who come from diverse cultural, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds and can be found tackling problems of poverty or injustice in early stage social ventures, non-governmental organizations, government, community-based organizations or the private sector. The Fellows program is for individuals with an entrepreneurial attitude, mindset, and approach towards solving issues of poverty or building a world based on dignity. They work full-time on this initiative and typically fall in one of the following trajectories:
KEY DATES
30 OCTOBER 2023 Applications Open
10 DECEMBER 2023 Applications Close
9 & 10 FEBRUARY 2024 Finalists attend the virtual Selection Conference
FEBRUARY 2024
2024 Cohort Selected
FELLOWSHIP OVERVIEW
The Good Society Readings use classical and contemporary texts to explore the meaning, values and tradeoffs in building a just society. Through these discussions, Fellows reflect on core human values and cultivate a richer perspective of their social change work in a broader historical context.
Adaptive Leadership is a practical framework that helps individuals and organizations lead change, particularly during times of uncertainty. These sessions support the Fellows’ individual and collective abilities to catalyze and embrace the gradual and meaningful process of change.
Polarities Management builds the capacity of Fellows to hold contradictory values and beliefs to be effective agents of social change. This ability enables leaders to be more proactive and nuanced in designing and supporting the solutions needed to tackle complex challenges.
Authentic Voice is a storytelling approach that focuses on public storytelling in service of translating the speaker’s values into the audience’s actions. During these sessions, Fellows further ground themselves in their purpose and develop their capacity to understand the audience and build a narrative with the aim of moving others to act.
Systems Thinking is a framework to help Fellows grapple with problems in complex environments and create large-scale, lasting social change. Fellows develop capacities to actively listen to various stakeholders, explore the forces within a system, construct a collective narrative, and analyze the system to find opportunities for leverage.