Empowering Young Voices in Policy

Ebenezar Wikina from Nigeria

I can still picture the broad smile on my face when I saw the mail in March 2020; Congrats! You have been chosen to participate in the Mandela Washington Fellowship. This was my 5th attempt at the Mandela Washington Fellowship (MWF) – I started applying when I was 23 – and I had already tweeted in 2019 that I was tired of trying. In the past, I had even proofread applications for my close friends who eventually secured the fellowship. It was frustrating but with my girlfriend’s encouragement [wife now] I decided to give it another shot and this time I was lucky. Or was I? COVID happened and the whole world changed before our eyes, including the fellowship with the entire being program conducted online. As host institutes, fellows and mentors go through multiple zoom meetings and canvas links, how could we make the best of these unprecedented times?

The Best of both Worlds

Perhaps I am indeed lucky in this scenario because unlike many other fellows, I’ve had the opportunity to visit the United States in person. In 2018 I attended the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit which was held in Silver Spring, Maryland bringing together over 400 youth development experts from around the world. Apart from co-organizing a side event on developing youth employment pathways with my colleagues at PIND Foundation, I also spoke at the opening and closing plenaries where at the latter I formally introduced YouthLead.org to the summit on behalf of USAID and Making Cents – a presentation I had less than one hour to prepare for and deliver to the delight of everyone in attendance including folks from USAID. After its formal launch, I went on to become a pioneer Ambassador of YouthLead in 2019.

Ebenezar speaking at the Global Youth Economic Opportunities Summit (Credit: GYEOS)

In addition to experiencing the US physically, I also got a chance to experience the US education system virtually when I got a scholarship from Harvard Kennedy School to participate in its first virtual Executive Public Narrative program in August 2019. The program lasted for four intensive months and it completely changed my worldview because prior to Harvard I had always wanted to go back to school to increase my education portfolio as I only had a National Diploma in Journalism at the time which I obtained in 2016 from the International Institute of Journalism, Abuja but I didn’t know how to combine it with my 9-to-5. When I finished the Harvard program successfully, I started to believe again and I got inspired to start a very ambitious self education project tagged #LearnwithEben where I tasked myself to complete a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Nexford University, a MicroMasters program (which has a blended pathway to a Master’s degree) in Data, Economics and Development Policy at MIT, and four additional Executive programs – all completed online simultaneously between 2020 and 2022. Fast forward to 2021, I have now completed a Diploma in Internet Journalism from the London School of Journalism, an Executive course in Business Sustainability from the Stanford Center for Professional Development, and as part of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, I’d be studying at the Leadership in Public Management Institute at Wayne State University. The learning data I will gather from #LearnwithEben will be published widely and I believe it will contribute to the formulation of virtual education policies in the future.

Ebenezar teaches final year students of Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic

Looking at the bright side, one of the perks from a virtual MWF that folks who attended the physical version don’t get is the exclusive one-on-one mentorship with an established professional who guides us through our focus projects and gives general professional/life advice. My MWF mentor, David Knezek, and I have so much in common and he has achieved a lot in Michigan’s political scene and I dream of doing the same back here in Rivers State, Nigeria including serving in the State legislature and doing loads of policy work.

A Seat the Table

Speaking about policy work, if I get the chance to visit Detroit in the future, I would love to engage with the Detroit Policy Conference which is being held this year on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. So many interesting policymakers are billed to speak at the conference this year and I believe it will be a great learning opportunity for me if I get the chance to attend.

Creating policy learning opportunities is also the reason my team and I founded PolicyShapers.com during the pandemic. After participating in the Stanford/MIT COVID-19 Policy Hackathon as well as the Stanford Open Datathon where I led my team to achieve a Honourable mention and a Top 3 policy award out of 300 participants, we realized that youth have so much to say about governance but do not often have a platform to coordinate their thoughts. Policy Shapers is the world’s first open source platform for policy ideas led by young people. Our goal is to mainstream youth in policy making and for me this in honour of all the organizations that have believed in me including the World Economic Forum who invited me to speak at WEF when I was 22, TED who approved my license to organize West Africa’s only TEDxYouth event in 2014 and of course the US Department of State for the MWF.

Ebenezar Wikina (2nd from Left) speaking at panel session during World Economic Forum on Africa (Credit: WEF)

When I was 23 I became the youngest Church Secretary in the 30-year history of my church and because I had a successful tenure, many more young people have been allowed to join the church secretariat. Today, as a member of the British Council UK-Africa New Narratives Youth Advisory Board, I am shaping continental policy that affects cultural relations between the UK and Africa. As I sit at several tables I will continue to move my seat creating space for other young people to sit.