A scholarship for those writing the next
chapter of the continent.
The OTJ Fellowship convenes a small cohort of researchers, builders, and stewards for a year of seminars, residencies, and a capstone of consequence. Fully funded. Selectively assembled.
Seminar
Weekly table
Residency
Field convenings
Convening
Lifelong network
The Fellowship
Four pillars,
one year, one cohort.
The Fellowship is structured to balance contemplation with consequence — the seminar table against the field, the discipline against the world.
Fellows are not students. They are early peers — already serious about a question, now given the time, the company, and the means to pursue it well.
Seminar
A weekly intellectual table led by faculty and visiting scholars. Drawn from political economy, technology policy, the natural sciences, and the humanities — chosen to widen the lens before the work narrows.
Residency
Four extended residencies across the continent. Fellows live and work alongside operating institutions — research labs, public agencies, ventures of consequence — for two to four weeks each.
Capstone
A year-end work of meaningful scope: a paper, a prototype, a policy brief, an institution begun. Selected by the fellow, shepherded by an advisor, presented to the convening.
Convening
The Fellowship is finite; the network is not. Fellows enter a lifelong assembly of alumni, stewards, and faculty who continue to read, write, and build alongside one another.
Cohort I · Class of 2026
Twenty-four fellows. One conversation.
Selected from more than two thousand applications across forty-one African countries. Below, a representative sample of the inaugural class.
Adaeze Okonkwo
Public Health Policy
Investigates how primary-care systems collapse under decentralisation, and what reconstitutes them. Capstone: a maternal-care index across three Nigerian states.
Yale, M.P.H. (2024)
Kofi Mensah
Climate & Agronomy
Soil scientist tracing cocoa-belt degradation. Building decision tools for smallholder rotation systems with agricultural extension officers in the Ashanti region.
ETH Zurich, M.Sc.
Naledi Litsoane
Constitutional Law
Studies the place of customary courts within Southern African constitutional orders. Capstone: a comparative reading of pluralist legal architectures in three SADC states.
Wits, LL.B. (Hons.)
Yonas Tesfaye
Computational Linguistics
Builds open-source language models for low-resource African languages. Currently leading a Geʽez and Amharic morphology corpus released under permissive licence.
Carnegie Mellon, B.S.
Rumbidzai Kanjanda
Economic History
Reads twentieth-century African monetary history against the present. Capstone: a slow archive of central-bank correspondence between the OAU and Bretton Woods.
LSE, M.Sc.
Thabo Sithole
Civic Technology
Founder of a procurement-transparency platform used by three municipalities. Studying how civic systems become institutional, and how they fail to.
UCT, B.Sc. (Eng.)
Aminata Diop
Architecture & Heritage
Documents the vernacular architectures of the Sahel under climatic stress. Designing climate-responsive school typologies with municipal partners in Saint-Louis.
GSD, M.Arch.
Joseph Otieno
Mathematical Biology
Models vector-borne disease across the lake region. Working with KEMRI on adaptive surveillance protocols for shifting endemic boundaries.
AIMS, M.Sc.
The full cohort is published each September following the convening week.
The Year
Four terms, three cities,
one work of consequence.
The Fellowship year follows an academic calendar adapted to the continent — structured for both rigour and breath, ceremony and field.
Michaelmas
September — December
Nairobi
Convening & First Seminar
Fellows arrive in Nairobi for a two-week orientation: meet the cohort, the faculty, and the framing of the year. The first seminar opens — a survey of the question each fellow has come to pursue.
Hilary
January — March
Cape Town
Residency I
A four-week residency hosted by partner institutions in Cape Town. Fellows shadow operating teams, sit in on board rooms and laboratories, and begin shaping the methods of their capstone work.
Lent
April — May
Distributed
Residency II & Field Work
Fellows disperse to their fields of inquiry. Some travel to ministries or research stations; others remain in proximity to their seminar advisor. Bi-weekly written submissions return to the cohort.
Trinity
June — August
Lagos
Capstone & Convocation
A final residency in Lagos. Capstone works are completed, defended in seminar, and presented at the closing convocation — open to faculty, alumni, and invited guests of the Fellowship.
Criteria
What we read for.
Demonstrated seriousness
A record — academic, professional, civic — that shows you have already begun to take a question seriously. Letters of reference and prior work matter more than transcripts alone.
A question of consequence
The Fellowship is not a degree programme. Applicants arrive with a question worth a year, and the discipline to widen it before answering. Submitted as a 2,000-word statement.
Capacity for company
Fellows live and learn in cohort. We look for evidence of intellectual generosity — the ability to read others closely and to be read in turn.
African nexus
Open to citizens of any African country, and to scholars of the African diaspora whose work materially concerns the continent. There is no age requirement; most fellows are between 22 and 32.
Calendar
Key dates for the Class of 2027.
A note on funding
The Fellowship covers tuition, residency travel, accommodation, a monthly stipend for the cohort year, and a capstone allowance. There is no application fee.
Faculty & Advisors
The seminar table is set by those who teach.
Faculty are scholars and practitioners of standing — convened from African universities, partner institutions, and visiting chairs. Each fellow is paired with an advisor at the beginning of the year.
Director of the Fellowship
Prof. Wanjiku Mwangi
Political Economy
Strathmore University · Princeton (visiting)
Convenes the seminar and leads the Michaelmas term. Author of three books on post-independence African statecraft.
Senior Fellow
Dr. Olusegun Adetayo
Public Health & Demography
University of Ibadan · Johns Hopkins
Shepherds capstones in health and population. Former adviser to the West African Health Organisation.
Senior Fellow
Prof. Mariama Bâ
Architecture & Urbanism
Université Cheikh Anta Diop · ETH Zurich
Leads the Cape Town residency. Practice and teaching span vernacular building, climate adaptation, and civic space.
Senior Fellow
Dr. Tinashe Mhondoro
Computer Science & Society
University of Cape Town · MIT Media Lab
Reads capstones in technology and policy. Founding member of the African Digital Public Infrastructure programme.
Visiting Faculty
Dr. Aïda Traoré
Law & Constitutional Theory
Sciences Po · Yale Law School
Joins for the Lent term. Scholar of legal pluralism, customary law, and the African Court on Human Rights.
Visiting Faculty
Prof. Samuel Kibet
Mathematics & Climate Science
AIMS · Oxford
Leads quantitative seminars during the Trinity term. Co-leads the African Climate Modelling Initiative.
Apply
The next class begins in September.
Applications for Cohort II open on the fourteenth of June and close at the end of September. The written round is read carefully and slowly. Shortlisted applicants are invited to interview in November; the cohort is announced on the first of February.