Shaping Futures: African-European Network on Development and Sustainability

The Shaping Futures: African-European Network on Development and Sustainability with its Academy (Shaping Futures Academy) is a dialogue and training programme targeted at early to mid-career professionals from participating African, (Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo, and Zambia) and European (EU+) countries.

The Shaping Futures Academy aims to empower future leaders on both continents by bringing together like- minded peers to reflect on their roles in their respective communities and institutions. They jointly develop strategies on how they can induce or support change processes for a transformation to sustainability in the present and future contexts.

The Shaping Futures Academy welcomes participants from various sectors (civil society, academia and think tanks, public administration, business and media) to encourage transdisciplinarity and to promote networking and knowledge exchange.

Format and Content

The Shaping Futures Academy is grounded on three essential elements that contribute to capacity development: knowledge, action and leadership.

• The knowledge element offers participants the space to exchange and jointly learn about the themes of governance and sustainability, on both a global and local level.
• The action elements offer participants the opportunity to combine and expand their knowledge and skills as well as to put them into practice.
• The leadership element focuses on developing individual and collective competencies, including strengthening dialogue skills, problem solving, exchanging perspectives, teamwork, reflecting on one’s values, and building strong and trustful relationships, which will also benefit the participants’ home institutions.

Application requirements

• The Shaping Futures Academy targets early to mid-career professionals from participating African (Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo and Zambia) and European (EU, plus EEA and UK) countries.Potential participants of the shaping futures academy should:
• Be a national or permanent resident of one of the participating countries
• Be 25-40 years of age at time of application
• Work on issues relevant for sustainable development and governance
• Have at least three years’ work experience (non-remunerated experience is also recognised)
• Have the support of their employer (written support required as part of the application)
• Have a very good command of the English language
• Be respectful of other cultures
• Be open to teamwork, reflection and a wide variety of working methods
• Be available and committed to attend and participate fully in both the online (may, September, November 2025) and in-person (June, July, October, 2025) modules of the Adhere to the principles of timeliness and respectful conduct during interactions
• Have a valid passport (at the time of travel and for the entire duration of the Academy)

Application guidelines

The deadline for applications is November 10, 2024. For more information about this opportunity and to apply, please click here.