Following the conclusion of six weeks of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, U.S. institutions of higher learning welcomed 2021 fellows to take part in the Alumni Enrichment Institutes. The Alumni Enrichment Institutes are a follow-on opportunity for 2021 fellows to develop their leadership skills and foster connections and collaboration with U.S. professionals.
We are excited to introduce the first of our three 2021 fellows, who were selected for this one-time opportunity. Mats’eliso ‘Mota is a legal professional and compliance practitioner currently employed by the Land Administration Authority (LAA) as a Risk and Internal Audit Coordinator. She is also the contact person on human rights issues. She has worked as a Legal Reviewer in a Systematic Land Regularization Project, in urban, peri-urban and rural Maseru and Leribe. Matseliso has been an active contributor in committees responsible for the submission of Lesotho State reports to various human rights treaty bodies and special mechanisms, including reporting to the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights. In addition to this, she serves as a local expert for the World Bank Group’s Women Business and the Law, in the areas of family law, property rights of women, land registration and financial inclusion and is also the Board Secretary for Alliance Française de Maseru. In 2021, she represented Lesotho in the Biennale of Luanda – a Pan-African Forum for the Culture of Peace, which was organised in partnership with UNESCO, the Government of Angola as well as the African Union, with the aim of promoting prevention of violence and conflict resolution by encouraging cultural exchanges in Africa. As a result of her participation, she was selected to sit on the ad hoc committee for the 2022-2023 UNESCO Biennale of Luanda Youth Programme as a Public Information Officer.
She is currently undertaking her #YALIEnrichment experience at the The University of Texas at Austin.
