Youth-Leaders Fellowship

About the Fellowship

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has the mission to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. In line with the United Nations’ Youth Strategy which calls on all UN agencies to “increase impact and expand global, regional and country-level action to address the needs, build the agency, and advance the rights of young people in all their diversity”, UNFPA Ghana launched the Youth Leaders (YoLe) Fellowship Program. The YoLe Fellowship Program is also aligned to the priority areas of the 2010 Ghana National Youth Policy, which include skills training in ICT, gender mainstreaming, networking and partnership, mentoring and reproductive health and rights for young people.

About the Pioneer

Edward Adeniyi Ojuolape is a Nigerian diplomat,international development consultant and the United Nations Populations Fund's UNFPA Country Representative to Ghana.Ojuolape was appointed as the UNFPA resident representative in Ghana in August 2017. He has mainstreamed youth issues, zero gender-based violence,and comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), as core strands of the organisation.

Ojuolape held the position of chief programme officer of donor coordination for the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) in Nigeria,[2] where he coordinated the communications, donor activities and the development of resource mobilisation strategies that led to an increase of $150 million in funding for the Agency's portfolio over a five-year period. He has also worked as the special assistant to the Minister of Health in Nigeria – Late Babatunde Osotimehin. He played an integral role in the success of the Ministry of Health's supervision of approximately 4000 staff members and a budget of about $1.2 billion. He also w