Former minister of education and World Bank vice president, Africa programme, Obiageli Ezekwesili has been awarded a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin from September 2019 to February 2020.
Others who bagged the fellowship are an international mediator from South Africa, Brian Currin; former Irish ambassador, David Donoghue; and former Mayor of the city of Wroclaw, Rafał Dutkiewicz.
Among others are a professor of science and engineering at the Harvard Kennedy School, Sheila Jasanoff; Furosemide Manji; and Natalie Nougayrède
While announcing Ezekwesili’s award of the fellowship, the Academy said, “She will design a pathway for Nigeria out of its stagnant politics” after the programme.
The Robert Bosch Academy is an institution of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and offers decision-makers, opinion leaders, and experts the space for confidential exchanges and solution-oriented cooperation on global affairs. The Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship was established in honor of the former President of Germany.
The fellowship offers a residency of several months in Berlin to outstanding personalities from around the world. Residencies at the Robert Bosch Academy provide fellows with the intellectual and physical space to pursue individual research and outreach activities on topics beyond their normal professional commitments.
To foster dialogue with the German and international public, the Robert Bosch Academy organizes activities tailored to the background and interests of the respective fellow.
Since its foundation in 2014, more than 65 decision-makers and experts from around the world have spent a residency at the Academy. You will find more information on the Robert Bosch Academy online.
During her fellowship, Obiageli Ezekwesili, a technocrat who recently ventured into politics and ran for President of Nigeria in the 2019 election, will investigate the nexus between politics and the unsatisfying results of economic management and nation-building process of Nigeria and more broadly, Africa.
Drawing immensely from her experiences in the 2019 election and her years as an economic reform expert, she plans to propose as well as execute a rescue plan to structurally change Politics and political outcomes in her country, Nigeria and Africa widely. Combining Analytics, Work Study Group, Case Studies, Experimentations and Experiential activities during her fellowship, Ezekwesili will interrogate political incentives, political institutions and the standard of political actors necessary to raise the quality of governance in her country, Nigeria and Africa broadly.
Ezekwesili is convinced that setting Africa’s politics and political landscape right is fundamental to instituting a strong pattern of good governance that will help convert her country and continent’s huge endowment of natural and human resources into lasting assets for equitable economic growth and development. The Presidential candidate in the 2019 election considers her mission of fixing Nigeria’s and Africa’s politics a creditable pathway for attaining good governance, inclusive and shared economic prosperity, harmony and political stability.
