Alumni Spotlight Series: Francesca Nyakora 2023
The following interview is part of the Council on African Studies’ Alumni Spotlight series featuring graduates from both the Master’s and Bachelor’s Degrees in African Studies. Francesca Nyakora graduated with a BA in African Studies & Political Science in 2023.
1. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself?
Hello! My name is Francesca Nyakora, I am 23 years old, and I am a graduate of the Yale University class of 2023. My family is originally from Kenya; however, I have lived in five different countries throughout my life and my international upbringing endowed me with an interest in global affairs from a young age. At Yale, I studied Political Science and African Studies with concentrations in IR and politics. My studies prepared me to pursue career opportunities in the field of international politics, and I am now working my first full-time job at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Carnegie is known as “The Global Think Tank”, and I am completing a one-year postgraduate fellowship as a Junior Fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance program.
I have spent my first year since graduation living in Washington D.C., and at the end of this summer I will be on my way out of the District. It is my goal to live in a different city for each year of my early-to-mid twenties and, thus far, things are fortunately going according to plan. Once I finish my Carnegie fellowship in August, I will spend a few months traveling and studying for the LSAT before I move to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil!
2. How was your time at Yale? Can you share a few memories that you think might encapsulate your experience?
Last May, I graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in African Studies, an advanced language certificate in French, and a certificate in Human Rights from Yale Law School’s multidisciplinary undergraduate academic program. I received distinction in my major and I won an award from the Council onAfrican Studies for my thesis “The Divergent Paths of National Unity and Ethnic Cleavage: A Comparative Case Study on Nation-Building Policies and PoliticalSocialization In Four Multi-Ethnic African Countries.”
Yale shaped me more than I can express. From presiding over the first-ever undergraduate Ivy League university conference hosted on the African continent to working for former Secretary of State John Kerry; Yale afforded me experiences that challenged me profoundly, and yet simultaneously endowed me with a sense of confidence about the kind of impact I am capable of making. By enabling me to travel to over a dozen countries, study four foreign languages, and intern at the U.S. Department of State as well as the United Nations Development Program, Yale opened up the world to me in entirely new ways. I left Yale a more worldly person.
However, above all, what most shaped my Yale experience was the countless moments of pure joy I experienced during my time as an undergrad. The beautiful friends and communities that Yale brought into my life definitively shaped me more than anything else. Although Yale was my dream from a young age, I could never have foreseen how beautiful my college experience would actually be. I remain shocked by the amount of love I continue to hold for Yale and the people I met there.
3. How did you end up at Yale focusing on African Studies?
Coming into Yale as a first-year, I was interested in studying international politics and development with a particular regional focus on Africa. As a result, I thought I would be best fit for the Global Affairs major. I reasoned that Global Affairs would allow me ample flexibility and enable me to take classes in other related departments, such as African Studies. Although I had decided on Global Affairs, during my first semester at Yale I was not yet preoccupied by major requirements. Therefore, I just enrolled in classes that appealed to my interests. Although unintentional, every course in which I enrolled was within the African Studies department.
My language class was especially consequential in my decision to major in African Studies. As I mentioned earlier on, my family is from Kenya. They speak Swahili; however, they did not teach me the language. I had always wanted to learn, but had never previously had an opportunity for formal study. Therefore, when I came to Yale and saw that I could study Swahili, I of course chose to do so. Because I was committed to mastering Swahili, I knew I would study it through the highest level. In doing this, I would also be completing the language requirement for the African Studies major.
Upon seeing that I was unintentionally heading towards completion of the African Studies major, I realized that double-majoring in African Studies made sense for me because I had a natural predilection towards the discipline. In the end, African Studies was the major that remained consistent throughout my four years at Yale because I genuinely enjoyed what I was studying.
4. How did your time at Yale and the AFST degree influence your life professionally and or personally?
My African Studies degree has significantly influenced both my personal and professional life. It gave me a unique portfolio which made me extremely competitive for several of Yale’s highly-selective multidisciplinary programs, such as the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, the Peace and Dialogue Leadership Initiative’s capstone trip to Palestine and Israel, the Yale Law School human rights program, and the Kerry Fellowship. Being part of so many high-level special programs at Yale made me more competitive for professional opportunities outside of Yale. For example, internships at the Department of State or at the United Nations are among the most high-level internships that a student or young professional in the field of global affairs can receive, and I had the privilege of receiving both. I was selected for such opportunities due to the topical expertise that the African Studies program and my other affiliations at Yale helped me develop. Because of these various prestigious academic and professional experiences, I was well-placed to apply for jobs in my field upon graduation. Finding a job in the field of global affairs as a young professional can be difficult because most jobs in this field do not have large recruitment cycles which hire hundreds of candidates each year. Rather, most posts are one-off and accept only a few people each year from pools of hundreds or thousands of applicants. I was lucky enough to be selected for two such opportunities: the Princeton in Africa fellowship and the Gaither Junior Fellowship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. My experiences at Yale made me a competitive enough applicant to be selected for the premier post-graduate fellowship on the African continent as well as a junior fellowship at the world’s best think tank.
Beyond these professional rewards, I also gained innumerable personal rewards from studying African Studies at Yale. For one, I was able to travel extensively on the African continent. I studied Kiswahili in Tanzania, did a UN internship in Senegal, organized an international conference in Rwanda, and received sponsorship for a study trip to Egypt. I also conducted field research for my Grand Strategy course and my senior thesis in Cameroon, Senegal, Tanzania, and Kenya. The rewards of these opportunities cannot be quantified– they are what I can only describe as life-changing. Another personal reward of having studied African Studies at Yale is the fact that I can now speak Swahili. Enrolling in Kiswahili for five semesters at Yale was one of the best decisions I have ever made because learning Swahili transformed my relationship with my country of origin. I feel so much more at home now that I can communicate in the local lingua franca.
5. Can you tell us about your career – how did you start out after you graduated, what was your early career decision making process and also discuss how that led to where you are now?
Since it has been less than a year since my graduation, I am still very much in the early stage of my career. I began working at the Carnegie Endowment in the fall after my graduation. I chose the opportunity at Carnegie because it was uniquely tailored for young, recent graduates. As a result, I knew that in addition to getting incredible work experience in the field of foreign policy research, I would also benefit from incredible professional development opportunities and mentorship from my highly accomplished senior colleagues.
Since the Junior Fellowship is structured to shape the “next generation of foreign policy leaders”, I do work that feels very consequential. It is a privilege to be at such a junior stage in my career and yet be trusted with work of such importance. While working at Carnegie, I have been able to formally publish an article as well as travel overseas on a business trip. Jobs which give such opportunities to 22 and 23-year-olds are hard to come by, so I know that I am incredibly lucky to have found one.
My fellowship at Carnegie is only one year long, so from the moment I started I have been considering what path I would like to take next. As someone working in the field of international affairs, I felt that it would be incredibly valuable to gain some experience abroad after my year in Washington D.C. For this reason, I applied to the Fulbright Scholarship: the world’s largest and most diverse international exchange program. I was recently selected as a Fulbright scholar, and I will be moving to Brazil next year to undertake my Fulbright project! I am extremely grateful for the international network that Carnegie has given me because it connected me to scholars in Brazil who were extremely supportive as I crafted my application and who are now helping me set the groundwork for my project as I prepare to make my move.
Until this point, my decision-making calculus has been to pursue opportunities that are intellectually, professionally, and personally rewarding. My first two professional opportunities have taught me that it is, indeed, possible to have all three of these rewards.
6. What advice would you give either to a current graduate student in AFST or an undergraduate student who is considering focusing on Africa as an undergrad or for graduate study?
If you are considering focusing on African Studies because you are interested in the discipline, you should absolutely do it. For one, your studies will be far more rewarding if you personally enjoy and are intellectually stimulated by what you study. I did not come to Yale with the plan of studying African Studies, and yet I decided to do so once I realized how much the program of study piqued my interest. It was an excellent personal choice, and also a smart future investment. Africa is the next frontier of global growth– both in terms of economic and human capital. If you know how to use your studies and market your degree, you should have no trouble finding rewarding professional opportunities beyond your time at Yale.