Ashoka East Africa and PMI Chapters Partner to Strengthen Social Entrepreneurship

Africa is home to the world’s youngest population, and by 2050 one in every three young people globally will live on the continent. This youth wave brings enormous potential, and a need to equip young Africans with the skills to lead, innovate, and deliver change.

Ashoka East Africa has long been a catalyst for social innovation. Its mission is to build a world where everyone is a changemaker — fostering innovation, empathy, and collaboration to solve complex social problems. With a network of 100 Ashoka Fellows, 50 youth-serving organizations, 15 changemaker schools, and reaching more than 4,000 young leaders, it’s cultivating a generation of changemakers and problem-solvers driving community-led change.

Now, Ashoka East Africa is taking that mission further through a new collaboration with PMI chapters. Together, they’re exploring how project management practices can help Ashoka Fellows and other changemakers—including young innovators—within their growing network scale their ideas and more effectively measure their impact.

Building structure for lasting impact

The collaboration took root in Kenya when Ashoka East Africa’s regional director connected with the PMI Kenya Chapter through a shared commitment to advancing social impact.

“We saw synergy and wanted to explore the low-hanging fruits,” recalls Zahra Ibrahim Lethome, partnerships lead for Ashoka East Africa. What began as a shared curiosity evolved into a collaboration built on training, co-learning, and building community connections.

Together, PMI Kenya and Ashoka East Africa have collaborated on several initiatives, including PMI life skills sessions for Ashoka staff, "Your Kids" training for the PMI Kenya team by Ashoka—a 90-minute, tailored workshop that equips participants with the mindset and skills to help every young person realize their power to create positive change in their communities—and networking events, and efforts to strengthen local connections.

Those life skills sessions also included a small group of young leaders, piloting how project management training could eventually extend to Ashoka Fellows, young changemakers' teams, and youth networks. “We thought, let’s start internally first and then see how we can scale this,” explains Zahra.

The initiative has helped Ashoka East Africa strengthen its internal systems, bringing more structure to how projects are implemented, and new insights on how impact is captured, measured, and communicated. “We saw opportunities to show the impact of what we're doing in a structured way,” says Zahra. “Following the project management life skills training, there's now intentionality around being structured.”

For Zahra, project management has become an enabler of progress. “It’s a guide to helping us capture the essence of what we’re doing on the ground,” she says.

That intersection—Ashoka East Africa’s mission of nurturing social innovators, combined with PMI’s frameworks for structured impact—is where transformation begins.

From one chapter to a Pan-African movement

Mobilizing project leaders and changemakers across borders, the collaboration has now grown into a Pan-African movement. PMI Rwanda has already joined the effort, and other chapters—including those in South Africa, Ghana, and Senegal—are in active conversations to expand this work. Together, this growing network will help amplify efforts to bring project management skills into Ashoka East Africa's initiatives.

Zahra describes the partnership as deeply reciprocal, with the organizations learning from and amplifying each other’s strengths. “We’re keen on identifying and working with anyone who resonates with our changemaking vision,” she says.

Beyond training, the partnership has become a catalyst for visibility and shared opportunities across networks. “There’s been a lot of networking opportunities, creating visibility in terms of speaking opportunities, workshops, and ecosystem engagements,” explains Zahra.

Looking ahead: scaling impact with PMWB

For Zahra and her team, project management isn’t just a toolset; it’s a mindset shift that brings intentionality and structure to social innovation.

“This has given us the impetus to be more intentional in integrating project management tools and skills into how we do our changemaking,” she says. “Because if we’re not able to capture the impact or the scale of the work that we're doing, then there’s a lot of knowledge that's being lost in between.”

She believes every nonprofit can benefit from embedding project management into its culture. “My advice would be to embrace project management, regardless of the field you’re working in as a nonprofit,” she adds. “It’s one of the core skills that everyone working in the NGO space needs to lead impactful engagements.”

Looking ahead, Zahra envisions a connected ecosystem where project management supports social entrepreneurship across Africa. With guidance from Project Managers Without Borders (PMWB) and growing collaboration among PMI chapters, that vision is beginning to take shape.

Together, they’re building the systems, confidence, and skills for Africa’s new generation of leaders to turn purpose into measurable, lasting impact. A key takeaway: ensure every project has defined measures of success — it’s the first step to bringing more structure to how impact is captured, measured, and communicated.

Tags: Social Impact | Membership | Chapter

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