IFLRY Vice President, Bobby Dean, has recently returned from South Africa where he has been training young leaders and building new networks with youth organisations across Africa.
The early part of the week was spent with young leaders from the Africa Liberal Network, (including Ghana, South Sudan, Botswana, Kenya and more) and Bobby led on a session looking at how to grow and strengthen youth organisations, drawing on examples of best practice from across IFLRY.
The latter part of the week was dedicated to the Democratic Alliance’s Young Leader’s Programme, where Bobby provided his perspectives on The Global State of Liberalism, observing some of the world’s major anti-liberal trends.
The events were supported by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
As well as being a fantastic opportunity to share best practice and build networks with key organisations from across Africa, an exciting development took place as a commitment towards building an ALN Youth was made by participants. This potentially provides IFLRY with an important access point and regional lead for Africa.
Bobby spoke excitedly about the impact the events could have on IFLRY’s ambition to be more global: “Africa is a key target region for IFLRY and it was fantastic to witness first hand just how well liberalism is thriving on the continent. I learned that the ALN is around four times bigger than the socialist and conservative equivalents and so we have a huge opportunity to tap in to a well-established network.”
