Generation Rwanda is working to transform higher education in East Africa. Each year, the organization recruits Rwanda’s brightest students that cannot afford university, funds their education, and trains them to become leaders in Africa’s emerging information economy. By opening a path to university for brilliant students from vulnerable backgrounds, Generation Rwanda believes that its work has the potential to revolutionize an entire society—making it smarter, more agile, and truly meritocratic.
Generation Rwanda receives over 4,000 applications from graduating students at schools and orphanages across Rwanda. Following three intensive rounds of selection, fewer than 1% are accepted into the program, making a Generation Rwanda scholarship one of the most prestigious academic accomplishments anywhere in the developing world and ensuring that its recipients are some of Africa’s most gifted thinkers.
Over 95% of Generation Rwanda’s students graduate, which is far higher than Rwanda’s national average, and better than almost any American scholarship program. 94% of its scholarship recipients are employed within a year, nearly all in fields like law, nonprofit and business management, software engineering, and medicine—exactly the type of game-changing careers that can propel Rwanda’s economy and political system into a model for the entire world.
This splendid book is more than a primer on social entrepreneurship for human rights in the developing world. It is also a compendium of searing testimony about the immense practical challenges that idealistic changemakers can overcome by dint of their unflagging energy, incandescent visions of humanity and justice, and on-the-ground skills and resourcefulness. Zachary Kaufman has performed a great public service in orchestrating this admirable volume about how hope for the future can be vindicated even under the most unpromising conditions.”