Kigali, Rwanda · since 2010
An Akilah education is about who you become,
not only what you learn to do.
An education rooted in wisdom, forming young leaders across East Africa.
Opened in 2010 as Rwanda's first college for women — now a co-ed institution, with the rise of women still at its heart.
6,000+
Educated
110+
Businesses founded
Graduates
at Microsoft, the UN, Marriott & more
15+
Countries
A letter from Elizabeth
You believed in these graduates before there was any proof — and what they've done with it still takes my breath away.
I stepped away for a few years. I needed to. I'm back now, steadier and more grateful than I know how to say. What we built together changed thousands of lives — and there's a new chapter taking shape. I'd love for you to be the first to know.
—Elizabeth Hughes, Co-Founder and CEO
Akilah means wise. We help young people grow into themselves — and into work that matters. It starts on the inside, with a steady inner life — the ground the rest is built on.
Grace Uwingabire, Class of 2013 · Founder, Grace Girls Coalition
Grace grew up where a girl's future was decided for her before she could read. She almost became that story. Akilah convinced her she was allowed to want a different one.
Today she runs the Grace Girls Coalition — finding the girls everyone else has written off, and staying with them until they believe what she once couldn't: that they are not the future someone assigned them.
Darlene, Class of 2013 · Founder, Isôoko Community Development
When Kate Spade came to Masoro to build a factory and the social programs around it, Darlene helped launch the whole thing — the kind of work that brings real jobs and dignity to a rural village. But she wanted to build something of her own, for the place she came from.
So she founded Isôoko Community Development — bringing care and real opportunity to the women and girls she grew up beside. Darlene is the kind of entrepreneur Akilah exists to create: she didn't wait for someone to fix her community. She built the thing that would.
Why it compounds
The Akilah Effect
An Akilah education is never spent on a single life. A graduate rises — and the return keeps paying, into her family, and into the next young person who needed someone to go first. That's the Akilah Effect.
In their own words
Ask a graduate what Akilah changed. Almost none of them name a skill — they tell you who they became.
"Before Akilah, I often felt worthless. I've since trained more than five hundred people to lead."
Divine Ikirezi Batamuliza Business, 2021
Works at Resonate"I reached Microsoft straight from a two-year diploma — without further studies."
Yves Ndihokubwayo
Information Systems, 2023 Works at Microsoft"The moment they saw I'd studied at Akilah, they offered me an internship on the spot."
Ruth Tuyishimire
Hospitality, 2022
Works aboard a cruise ship"Akilah helped me see my identity as a source of strength, not a limitation."
Bernadette Niyoyitungira
Hospitality, 2017
Disability-inclusion advocate, BurundiThe proof
It's working. Akilah has educated more than six thousand students across East Africa — who've gone on to found over a hundred and ten businesses and rise into leadership across the region. In 2026, Emmanuella Uwimbabazi, from that first class of fifty, accepted Marriott International's highest global honour — the first person from East Africa ever to win it. Sixteen years, from a small classroom to a global stage.
The work
What your support builds
A diploma was only ever the first door. We help her through the ones after it.
Akilah stays with a graduate long after graduation — and that's where your support goes.
The Fellowship
Gives a graduate a paid year that turns ability into the kind of leadership others follow.
The Akilah Grant Fund
launching later this year — will put real capital behind the ventures she's already building, like Grace's and like Darlene's.
This is the engine behind every story on this page. It runs on people who believe in these graduates — and it carries that belief into what comes next.
The Network
keeps six thousand graduates rising together, mentoring each other long after they leave.
What's coming
The next chapter
Sixteen years ago, we made a bet most people called premature. We're about to make another — and it's the boldest one yet.
We've been building Akilah's next chapter quietly, for years. It's almost ready. The people who've walked with Akilah will see it first — before any announcement, before the world.
Be one of them. It unfolds on Substack — Elizabeth's letters, and the story as it breaks, right up to the moment it goes public.
Who you're backing
Akilah is run by the people it made — most of them the women it once taught, running the institution that formed them. A lean crew in Kigali, no head office abroad. Every gift goes straight to the young leaders shaping Rwanda's future.
For Rwandan partners
Built in Rwanda, run by Rwandans.
Akilah has always belonged to the country it serves — led on the ground by our own graduates, rooted in the community around us. We work alongside the schools and employers betting on young Rwandan talent. If you're building something for young people here and think we might do it better together, we'd like to hear from you.