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Six Egyptians Selected Among Young Africans for Obama Leadership Program

July 15, 2018
Official White House photo by Pete Souza
Official White House photo by Pete Souza

Six young and entrepreneurial Egyptians are among 200 Africans to be selected in the inaugural class of a program run by the Obama Foundation aimed at bringing together young leaders from across Africa.

The 2018 ‘Leaders: Africa’ program brings together 200 ’emerging leaders’ from across 44 countries to explore “new ways to take on the biggest challenges in their communities”.

Among the six Egyptians selected as part of the one-year program is Egyptian Streets co-founder and Breadfast founder Mostafa Amin, who was recently selected among the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe and the Middle East. The other five highly-successful Egyptians in attendance are Hossam Eldeen Abdelfatah, Yara Al-Braidy, Sara Gabr, Mohamed Shaheen and Alia Soliman.

Who are the Egyptians?

The Obama Foundation’s website lists names the six Egyptians along with a short bio as set out below.

 Hossam Eldeen Abdelfatah

Hossam is a driven and serial entrepreneur who has started various businesses across Africa. Since his graduation from the African Leadership Academy, Hossam has taken it upon himself to empower startups and individuals by providing training and consulting services.

Yara Al-Braidy

Yara is a media practitioner with 6 years of experience in campaigning for social change. She earned a BA in mass communication from Cairo University in Egypt and attended an intensive media and digital literacy program at the Lebanese American University.

Mostafa Amin

Mostafa is an Egyptian serial entrepreneur and who has built different startups in media, machine learning, and food e-commerce. His venture is called Breadfast (Breadfast.com) and they deliver fresh baked products and breakfast to customers’ doorsteps every morning.

Sara Gabr

Sara’s work revolves around documenting human rights violations in Egypt and collecting data on these violations. She gathers testimonies from families of prisoners and former prisoners about forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture in prisons.

Mohamed Shaheen

Mohamed is an entrepreneur, product manager, and cloud and mobile solutions architect, with over 16 years of experience. He is the CEO of Appgain.io and co-founder of iKhair.net.

Alia Soliman

Alia is an Egyptian women’s right and gender advocate. She works at HarassMap NGO as a marketing and communications unit head.

What exactly is the program?

‘Leaders: Africa’ kicks off in South Africa on 15 July. The 200 emerging leaders are convening for five days in Johannesburg as part of the one-year leadership and development program that is “designed to train, support, and connect emerging African leaders to create positive change in their communities.”

In South Africa, the emerging leaders are expected to hear from former US President Barack Obama, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a number of other leading and inspirational African figures.

The program is the first of its kind to be held by the Obama Foundation, which was founded in 2014 by former US President Barack Obama.

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