FARAI MUBAIWA
Youth activist
In a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and a despondent youth, we need more of young women like her than ever before. Purpose, compassion, and impact are the three words that best define Farai Mubaiwa’s (26) journey as she tries to shape a better Africa through her work in youth development, gender equality, and African growth.
Farai is a partner management lead at Youth Employment Service (YES). YES is a business-led NPO that works in partnership with government and labour to initiate policy changes that promote job creation for the youth.
Prior to her association with YES, Farai served as a project manager at The Aurum Institute, a leading African TB and HIV research and implementation institute. Her main project, Youth Health Africa, focused on decreasing the spread of HIV, and reducing the high levels of youth unemployment, by equipping 10 000 youth from heavily burdened communities with knowledge and education about HIV and AIDS, and providing skills development and employment to ensure that disenfranchised youth contribute to South Africa’s healthcare. Farai is a nonexecutive director at Youth Health Africa.
Before working at The Aurum Institute, she was an intern at the South African Institute of International Affairs. She achieved a distinction for her MSc in Political Economy of Emerging Markets at King’s College, London. Her dissertation on South African Private Companies and Black Women, examined the effect of the Employment Equity Act (affirmative action policy) on the representation, corporate experience and career projection of Black women, receiving a mark of 85%. Prior to doing her Masters, she worked at Deloitte as an analyst for strategy and operations consulting.
She is the co-founder of the youth-led organisation Africa Matters. This empowers young Africans to lead by teaching leadership skills, capacity building, and through community-impact projects. Farai is a Queen’s Young Leader for South Africa for 2017, a TEDx speaker, a One Young World Ambassador, and a King ’s Principal’s Global Leadership Award Recipient. In 2018, she was named by Media24 as one of the top 100 Mandelas of the Future. She is a Dalai Lama 2019 Fellow, and in 2020 she was rated as one of the top 100 Influential Young South Africans.