Ashoka new fellows from East Africa
This year, Ashoka—the global organization that supports leading social entrepreneurs—has named four new Fellows from East Africa.
Drawn from Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda, these changemakers are tackling some of the region’s most complex challenges, from newborn survival and LGBTQ+ inclusion to youth mental health and national reconciliation.
Though their areas of focus differ, the 2025 Fellows share a common vision: transforming entrenched systems by empowering communities from within.
Ashoka’s selection process is rigorous, identifying individuals with a fresh, system-shifting idea, proven creativity, an entrepreneurial mindset, a strong ethical fiber, and potential for widespread social impact.
By supporting locally rooted innovators, Ashoka aims to build an “Everyone a Changemaker” world—one where solutions emerge from trust, proximity, and lived experience.
The 2025 East Africa Fellows are;
Doris Mollel (Tanzania): Strengthening Neonatal Care Nationwide
In Tanzania, complications from premature birth remain a major cause of infant mortality.
Many public hospitals are under-resourced, with limited neonatal equipment and inconsistent training among healthcare providers.
Doris Mollel, born prematurely herself, has dedicated her work to closing these critical gaps through a blend of advocacy, direct intervention, and system-level reform.
Her organization, the Doris Mollel Foundation, has expanded neonatal care across 27 of the country’s 30 regions.
The foundation provides essential equipment such as CPAP machines, incubators, and phototherapy units, while also running training programs to build clinical capacity among healthcare workers.
In addition to strengthening hospital infrastructure, Mollel has been instrumental in driving national policy change.
In 2024, her advocacy helped extend maternity leave for mothers of premature babies by four months, allowing more time for postnatal care and recovery.
Public awareness is a core part of her strategy.
Through community outreach, media campaigns, and partnerships with local leaders, the foundation has raised the profile of preterm birth as a public health issue.
By combining grassroots mobilization with government engagement, Mollel is working to ensure that neonatal care is prioritized not only in hospitals but across national health policies.
Okong’o Kinyanjui (Kenya): Building a Digital Network for Queer Africans
In Kenya, where same-sex relationships are criminalized, LGBTQ+ individuals face social exclusion, legal vulnerability, and limited access to services.
Okong’o Kinyanjui has responded to these risks by creating the Queer Africa Network (QAN), a digital platform designed to foster resilience, visibility, and community among queer Africans.
The platform provides users with access to job listings, mental health support, housing resources, funding opportunities, and educational tools.
It also allows members to share their own experiences, contribute local information, and connect across borders.
QAN operates in at least 12 African countries and has a growing reach among diaspora communities.
Kinyanjui’s model goes beyond advocacy by offering practical, decentralized infrastructure for survival and growth.
His work has gained recognition from international institutions, including Echoing Green, NUMUN Fund, and the Obama Foundation’s Africa Leaders Program.
By creating a peer-led, digital ecosystem, Kinyanjui is offering queer Africans tools to navigate—and challenge—the systems that marginalize them.
Christian Intwari (Rwanda): Engaging Youth in Reconciliation through Creative Learning
More than three decades after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda continues to reckon with the task of national healing.
While institutional rebuilding has made major strides, younger generations often grow up disconnected from the events that shaped their country.
Christian Intwari is working to change that through Our Past Initiative, an education program that uses art and civic engagement to involve youth in reconciliation.
The initiative introduces Rwandan students to the country’s history through participatory learning: theater, storytelling, visual art, and dialogue-based workshops.
These activities are coupled with community service projects that foster shared responsibility and intergenerational exchange.
The model draws inspiration from Rwanda’s homegrown reconciliation systems—such as Umuganda and Gacaca—while adapting them to a new generation’s learning style.
By reframing reconciliation as a continuous and participatory process, Intwari is helping youth see themselves as active contributors to peacebuilding, not passive inheritors of the past.
Tom Osborn (Kenya): Scaling Youth Mental Health Support through Peer Networks
Mental health issues among adolescents are rising globally, and Kenya is no exception.
Despite growing need, access to care remains limited due to high costs, stigma, and a shortage of mental health professionals.
Tom Osborn’s Shamiri Institute offers a scalable alternative—an evidence-based, school-centered model delivered by peer counselors.
The Shamiri approach trains recent high school graduates as “Thrive Fellows” to deliver mental health sessions to students using tools adapted from cognitive behavioral therapy and positive psychology.
These interventions are offered in classrooms, in group formats, and at no cost to students or schools.
Since its founding in 2018, the Shamiri Institute has reached over 130,000 youth across Kenya.
Independent clinical trials published in JAMA Psychiatry and other journals have confirmed that Shamiri’s programs significantly reduce depression and anxiety symptoms among participants within just a few weeks.
To support broader scale-up, Shamiri has developed a digital platform to monitor program quality and track student outcomes.
The institute works closely with school administrators, county governments, and education officials to integrate mental health into Kenya’s broader education and health systems.
By shifting the model from clinic to classroom and from expert-led to peer-led, Osborn is transforming how mental health care is understood and delivered to young people in Kenya and beyond.
A Movement Beyond Individuals
East Africa stands at a crossroads—its population is young, its civic challenges are evolving, and its innovators are increasingly home-grown.
The 2025 Ashoka Fellows are emblematic of this shift. They do not ask permission to lead.
They build, they teach, they legislate, they heal.
As they join Ashoka’s global network of over 3,800 social entrepreneurs, Doris, Okong’o, Christian, and Tom bring with them stories of resilience and blueprints for progress.
Ashoka’s 2025 East Africa Fellows represent a growing movement across the continent—where entrepreneurship meets empathy, and where bold ideas emerge not from privilege, but from urgency. I
In each of their stories, the broader vision of Ashoka is evident: a world in which everyone sees themselves as a changemaker.
