PHOTOS: Nigerian Man Named One Of 100 Brightest Young Minds In Africa 2017

Nigeria’s Chikezie Emmanuel Uzuegbunam, a second-year doctoral student at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town has just been selected and named one of 100 Brightest Young Minds in Africa by an international leadership development organisation, Brightest Young Minds (BYM) headquartered in South Africa.

The organisation identifies, connects and mobilises Africa’s most innovative and responsible young people, and gathers them from around the continent to train, mentor and empower them to become change agents as next generation of African leaders in their various spheres of endeavour.

After a rigorous selection process, Chikezie was selected based on his past academic and social innovation works and resume. He is currently joining other awardees in Sandton, Johannesburg for an intense life-changing summit that is billed to run from Sunday 24th September until Saturday 30 September 2017.

Chikezie joined other outstanding young people within the ages of 25 and 35 from up to 17 African countries on a funded summit to engage on issues around social innovation, technology, Big Data, Social Entrepreneurship, Business Financing, Project Development and Model Building to mention a few. There are guest speakers and facilitators from the government, private, public and civil society sectors and groups who are invited as part of the trainings, workshops and seminars that comprise the summit agenda. One of such guests is South Africa’s Minister for Small Business Development, Ms. Lindiwe Zulu who spoke on the need for the Bright Young Minds to take on the challenge of preparing, leading and living up to the bill and responsibility of championing the next generation of Africa towards eradication of poverty, unemployment, corruption, digital infrastructural development among others.

Sharing a few words on how his participation at the summit, Chikezie says:

“It has been an incredible time so far at the summit of Africa’s Brightest Young Minds. Having been to mostly academic conferences and events in the past, this is a whole new, different and amazing experience for me as a young person on the continent. It is making me come up with better social innovation ideas that would impact society aside from the academic research that I have been engaged with, providing new ways of thinking about making impact with my work and passions. I am grateful to have been selected and invited into this very competitive space and my gratitude goes to BYM for the opportunity. I feel ever more challenged and exposed to varirty of new and never-heard-of-before resources to launch me into the next level as an impactful young leader on the continent”.