Farida Yahya

Farida is a social entrepreneur and leader with over 14 years of experience in the media, community, and social development sectors. She is the current President of the Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni Association of Nigeria (MWFAAN), a network of young African leaders who have participated in the flagship program of the U.S. government's Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).
As the President of MWFAAN, she oversees the strategic direction, governance, and operations of the association, which aims to foster collaboration, innovation, and impact among its members and partners. She also leads the development and implementation of various initiatives and projects that address the challenges and opportunities facing Nigeria and Africa, such as entrepreneurship, education, health, governance, and civic engagement.

Farida is passionate about empowering local communities, especially women and youth, through enterprise development and digital learning. She is the founder and CEO of The Brief Academy, a platform that provides access to affordable and quality online courses and mentorship for female founders from underserved communities. Through The Brief Academy, she has impacted over 3,500 women and 1,000 startups across Nigeria and beyond.
Farida is a 2021 Mandela Washington Fellow, a 2x TEDx speaker, and a published author of two books. She has been recognized as one of Nigeria's 100 Most Inspiring Women, one of Arewa's 100 People of 2016, and a finalist for JCI Nigeria's Ten Outstanding Young Persons and Humanitarian Award Global's Most Exceptional Change Maker. She is also a non-executive director at Republicom Group, a leading media and communication company in Nigeria.

While working as a Program Coach with Future Females Empowerment initiative under the UK Aid-funded business school program, she helped improve the business model and team building strategy of over 500 early stage, female owned, tech-enabled businesses in Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa and Kenya by guiding them through the business school's concierge curriculum and increasing their combined net worth to over $1 Million.

Farida has a background in Biochemistry and business development and volunteers as a career mentor for several groups including; skills outside school foundation, Northbridge foundation, YALI RLC and the US State department’s ECA funded AWE program. She is currently a One League Fellow studying Enterpreneurship and Product Innovation at Stanford Online.
Farida Yahya is the Deputy National president of AWEP Nigeria, where she coordinates and supports it's 1760 members across the 36 states, to scale towards their export dream, into Europe and North America.

African Women Entrepreneurship Programme (AWEP) is an outreach, education, and engagement initiative that targets African women entrepreneurs to promote business growth, increase trade both regionally and to U.S. markets through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and other trade initiatives.