Tujenge Africa Foundation

The Tujenge Africa Foundation is a U.S.-based non-profit organization with operations in Africa’s Great Lakes region. “Tujenge” comes from the Swahili verb meaning to build or construct. Our goal is to build African capacity through quality, innovative, and boundary-pushing education. The Foundation will help boost the potential of the poorest and most marginalized in the African Great Lakes region through development initiatives that focus on education, dialogue, and economic advancement. We have begun our initial phase of operations in Burundi, while maintaining a long-term vision of providing the same opportunities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, as well as in other conflict-affected nations in Africa.

The Tujenge Scholars Program is the flagship initiative of the Tujenge Africa Foundation. The first of its kind in Burundi, TSP is an eighteen-month, 7.5-hours-per-day, intensive preparatory program designed to equip the next generation of Burundian leaders with the connections and skills that they will need to move the country forward. The program focuses on academic objectives of peacebuilding through dialogue, practical practice in ethical leadership, English language proficiency, developing critical thinking skills and university readiness, and university access. The core academic pillars are supplemented with a highly intentional recruitment strategy that ensures radically diverse representation within cohorts as well as a robust alumni engagement mission to support students during university studies and beyond.

The first cohort of Tujenge Scholars graduated from the program in spring 2018.