Young African leaders appreciate opportunity to learn at ASU

Al Kags is one of 25 young African leaders who participated in a six-week civic leadership program at the ASU College of Public Programs this summer. It was sponsored by the U.S. State Department as part of the Mandela Washington Fellows program. He was a guest on Phoenix NPR station KJZZ along with Public Programs dean Jonathan Koppell.

Kags told KJZZ's "Here and Now" host Steve Goldstein that he originally had reservations about coming to Arizona in the summer, and even asked to be sent to one of the 19 other universities hosting a total of 500 fellows. But the Nairobi, Kenya, marketing and communications professional found ASU to be an excellent host, and Arizona to be a great place to learn.

"The experience I've had over the past six weeks has been tremendously surprising and really heartwarming," says Kags.

Kags and Koppell talked about some of the myths Americans have of Africa and vice versa.

"What Americans don't see is an incredibly vibrant economy," says Koppell. "What they don't see is the youngest population in the world that is focused on improving circumstances, starting businesses. They don't see any of that."

Kags says an even bigger problem is that Americans think of sub-Saharan Africa as one big country instead of 49 distinct nations. As part of their civic leadership training at ASU, Kags and several other Mandel Washington Fellows proposed creating an organization to provide evidence-based research to improve primary education throughout Africa.

"There is a lot of conversation about the education sector, but there is not enough evidence to help people know how to think about the problem, or to articulate the problem better," Kags says.

Kags and six other fellows proposed working with ASU and African universities to help develop a sustainable model for a continental-wide education policy.

Listen to the conversation here.