African Union (AU) Digital & Innovation Fellowship Program 2026 – YOA

Deadline: February 28, 2026

Applications are open for the African Union (AU) Digital & Innovation Fellowship Program 2026. The African Union (AU) Digital & Innovation Fellowship is a 12-month immersive program that empowers Africa’s brightest digital innovators to work from inside AU establishments. Through a structured placement inside the AU system, fellows obtain tailor-made capability constructing, skilled growth, worldwide publicity, and monetary help all through the period of this system.

The objective is to co-develop information-pushed and know-how-enabled options with AU workers, based mostly on recognized challenges and technological gaps, to strengthen governance, public service supply, and institutional capability throughout the AU establishments.

Launched in 2021, the fellowship helps the implementation of the AU Digital Transformation Strategy and Agenda 2063, opening concrete pathways for African youth to have interaction in continental governance and public sector innovation.

Benefits

• Capacity constructing and ability growth: The fellowship offers structured capability constructing {and professional} growth tailor-made to the wants of African youth working in know-how, information, and innovation. The objective is to empower them to strengthen each technical {and professional} abilities related to digital transformation, public sector innovation, and information-pushed choice-making.
• Immersive institutional expertise: Fellows acquire an immersive, fingers-on expertise by working carefully with AU workers to co-develop information-pushed and know-how-enabled options. Through this strategy, they tackle recognized challenges inside AU techniques and contribute on to improved governance, public service supply, and institutional capability.
• Financial barrier-free pathway: Fellows obtain a month-to-month stipend of 2500 Euros all through the 12-month interval, together with entry to an in-form tools funds of as much as 800 Euros and a person studying funds of 500 Euros to help upskilling throughout this system.
• International and continental publicity: Through two on-floor, interactive bootcamps in Addis Ababa and a mid-time period delegation journey to Germany, fellows will entry continental and worldwide publicity by way of interplay with various stakeholders, coverage actors, and companions throughout Africa and Europe.
• Institutional influence and data switch: Throughout this system, fellows play an energetic position in creating sustainable institutional change by embedding data, instruments, and digital practices inside the AU techniques. This strategy ensures that every fellow’s work continues to create lengthy-time period worth past the 12-month program period.

Eligibility

• Be a citizen of an African Union member state and at present based mostly in Africa
• Be underneath 35 years outdated on the time of application
• Hold a tertiary training diploma (bachelor’s diploma or equal)
• Demonstrate downside-fixing abilities and the power to suggest progressive, know-how-pushed options
• Have expertise in designing or implementing know-how merchandise or information-pushed tasks, together with familiarity with related technical instruments or stacks
• Be in a position to commit 12 months to the fellowship, together with relocation to Addis Ababa
• Be prepared and in a position to journey for bootcamps, delegation journeys, and program actions
• Be sufficiently proficient in English to actively take part; proficiency in one other AU official language (Arabic, French, Portuguese, Spanish, or Swahili) is strongly inspired

Application

Express your interest to be the first to know once the applications open

For extra info, go to AU Digital & Innovation Fellowship.