Africa Leadership Accelerator FAQs
Interested in applying for GHC’s Africa Leadership Accelerator? Here are answers to the most commonly asked questions about joining our community of leaders.
Interested in applying for GHC’s Africa Leadership Accelerator? Here are answers to the most commonly asked questions about joining our community of leaders.
To apply for the Africa Leadership Accelerator, you must:
There are no specific education or training requirements to be eligible for participation; however, fluency in English is necessary since all instructions will be given in English.
Yes! The fellowship program is designed to be done alongside your full-time position. It is an eligibility requirement to be in a full-time, non-clinical public health role when applying. The program content is designed for real-world application, and workshops and learnings will take place during your work day. We encourage you to have a conversation with your supervisor to see if the fellowship is the right fit for you. You will need a recommendation from your supervisor to qualify.
We require that fellows stay with the same organization for the duration of the fellowship. If you are expecting to transition out of your current workplace (e.g. to pursue a full-time graduate program or a new job) within the next year, please apply during a future cycle.
Our program is intended to provide fellows with resources and insights they can apply immediately, followed by opportunities for reflection and learning. We also expect to leverage fellows’ supervisors for insights and support during the program duration.
That said, we know that unexpected transitions happen and we’ll work closely with fellows who transition out of their current workplace to determine whether it makes sense for them to continue in the fellowship community or not. That will be determined on a case-by-case basis, considering fellows’ new opportunity, their capacity, and their ability to fully engage with the fellowship.
Non-clinical refers to public health work that does not involve providing direct medical care to patients.
Not Eligible: Clinical roles or work involving direct patient care, such as the work of physicians, nurses, PAs, midwives, or other positions responsible for diagnosis, treatment, or clinical services delivery.
Eligible: Roles focused on policy, program design and implementation, research, advocacy, management, data analysis, communications, systems strengthening, etc.
Onboarding to a new organization is an intensive activity. We want to ensure that fellows can fully engage with the fellowship. Furthermore, we want to ensure that fellows have had time to build strong relationships with their supervisors and peers to gain useful feedback from them during the fellowship, and the support needed to apply new tools and insights as a result of their participation in the fellowship.
The Africa Leadership Accelerator is designed to support the leadership development of public health professionals already working in public health roles upon acceptance. The goal of the program is to support emerging health leaders to develop their leadership skills and build their networks to increase their influence on their organizations and their ecosystems and their impact on health equity.
We’re proud of our legacy fellowship that we ran from 2009-2024 and the amazing impact it achieved, placing hundreds of young Africans into roles within leading health organizations across Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia and supporting their growth. After much reflection, our team decided to wind down the program given persistent sustainability challenges (read more on this decision here).
We recognize that many young professionals, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa, continue to face barriers to entry to global and public health jobs. We’re currently assessing how best we can bring GHC’s expertise and network to bear on addressing this challenge. Please stay tuned for updates.
We are eager to scale our Africa Leadership Accelerator to reach even more leaders across the continent! For now, we’ve decided to focus on the countries where we have the strongest partnerships and highest demand to ensure program success in the first year. We’ll be actively working with partners to identify key georgraphies where we can make a lasting impact and support leaders committed to advancing health equity in their communities.
There is no tuition! Travel to retreat locations, lodging costs, and most meals for in-person retreats will be covered through the program. If accepted, participation in all components of the fellowship program is mandatory, unless otherwise noted.
Cohorts are designed to maximize individual learning and grow the networks of our fellows. The typical cohort size is 30-50 fellows.
Employers are invited to contribute toward the cost of the program in a way that reflects their context and capacity. The amount of contribution does not influence applicant selection or ranking and must never become a barrier to participation.
Employers and supervisors are also encouraged to support fellows by allowing time to participate in fellowship activities (monthly workshops, retreats, etc.) and apply learnings in their work and the fellows’ own professional goals.
No, you will receive online access to all necessary materials to prepare for each session.
We understand that fellows occasionally have unavoidable conflicts with training sessions. However, attendance at all workshops and retreats is mandatory. A detailed program calendar is shared before the fellowship starts. We have seen time and again how integral attendance is to the learning experience of fellows and the cohort as a whole. That said, in some cases, we can work with you to make up for missed workshops given advance notice.
On average, you can expect to spend 1-2 hours preparing for the monthly training, primarily reading articles and completing prep work that will be incorporated into workshops, and shared in advance of workshops. You will also have one 1 hour self-scheduled virtual gathering in a small group of co-fellows monthly. In addition, fellows will engage in 3-5 hours of async coaching, mentorship, and professional development throughout the month.
The co-fellow model has been a fundamental aspect of the GHC experience since our inception: bringing diverse colleagues into an intimate professional relationship fosters perspective-sharing, opportunities for learning, and access to unique networks, resources, and ideas.
This model is different in the Africa Leadership Accelerator Fellowship: we have tightly bonded small groups (3-5 fellows each), across multiple lines of difference (e.g. gender, country, sector). This design creates opportunities for learning through multiple lenses.
Applications for our 2026-2027 cohort are now closed—thank you to all who applied!
Applicants can expect to hear about their status by July 31, 2026.
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Access our application preview here to better prepare your materials for submission.
Once applications close, our team reviews every application and selects finalists to interview with members of the GHC team. Finalist interviews will take place in May and June. All applicants will learn about their status by July 31, 2026.
Candidates can expect to hear back from us no later than July 2026. We look at every application and appreciate your patience as we intentionally select our next cohort year! Be sure to add [email protected] and [email protected] to your email contacts so they don’t get sent to your spam folder.
No, unfortunately, we won’t be able to allow deferrals; however, you are welcome to apply to future cohorts as long as you continue to meet the eligibility requirements.