Achaleke’s key priority includes consistently contributing to positive change globally.
Achaleke Christian Leke modestly describes himself as a “multi-award-winning peacebuilder and violent extremism expert with 17 years of experience working as a practitioner, researcher and academic from Cameroon”.But those with a deeper knowledge of the 34-year-old’s humble beginning, his groundbreaking achievements and continuous consistent strides in peacebuilding and community development know the Local Youth Corner Cameroon Executive Director and African Union Youth Ambassador for Peace as an epitome of change.
Achaleke has in the last close to two decades, been a dynamic and a down to earth pacesetter with several pioneering lifechanging youth-led initiatives through Local Youth Corner Cameroon and other institutions. He is mainly known among youths for his fearlessness, commitment and dedication to fighting crime, his campaigns for inclusive education and for his activities in resolving the ongoing socio-political crisis in the North West and South West Regions.
Achaleke’s efforts in facilitating dozens of youth-led community dialogues in the two conflict-affected North West and South West regions is solidifying the dynamics and positively driving youth participation in the peace process in the two regions. Through Local Youth Corner, he has championed actions across over 600 peacebuilding and community development schemes, notably facilitating the rehabilitation, integration and improvement of livelihood faced with crime and violent extremists and vulnerable communities.
Those outstanding efforts, hailed at the continental and global stages, have coupled with his role in co-authoring dozens of publications and policies helped over the years in not only shaping the dynamics of the Disarmament and Demobilization and Reintegration, DDR processes in Cameroon but played similar strategic roles in accompanying and strengthening the State of Play Process and Procedures, SPRR, in the Lake Chad Basin.
The former student of the University of Buea in the South West Region has led similar activities in the Far North Region which has in the last decade, been seriously affected by extremism perpetrated by jihadist group, Boko Haram. Achaleke and his team introduced the Salaam School Initiative in the zone in 2018, providing a forum for young learners affected by the conflict in the area to get back to the classrooms.
The committed changemaker and development driver has over the years, also used sports as a major instrument to push for peace, unity, the spirit of living together and community development. The youngster anchors the sport programs on the Na We We Jamboree scheme. Through the program, Achaleke and his team at Local Youth Corner Cameroon organize a holiday tournament for persons age between 15 to 35 years.
The program is used annually to sensitize over 100 thousand young Cameroonians of that age bracket on the values of peace, living together and other those linked to gender-based violence, child protection and other people-oriented areas of interest.Besides pioneering initiatives at the level of Local Youth Corner Cameroon, Achaleke and his team have also been fully engaged in uniting forces with other non-governmental organizations to promote change.
He and his partners have organized forums to provide platforms for youths at the national levels to dialogue and discuss major issues of national interest with priorities on the youth perspective. The multiple pioneering and lifechanging works carried out by Achaleke and his solid and supportive has earned him, his team and his partner’s recognition from several national, continental and global institutions.
Notable among them, the United Nations Organizations, the UN and the African Union, the AU where he is currently serving as a Youth Ambassador with specificities as a representative for the Central African subregion in the continental body. His strides have enabled him to meet with some of world’s most impactful people, placing him in strategic positions to speak truth to power and negotiate opportunities for young people and campaign for proper dialogue designed to work for the interest of youths.
Seven years ago in 2018, Achaleke was admitted to the Advisory Board of the International Institute of Justice and the Rule of Law, a global structure that provides non-binding advice to the Executive Secretariat of the international institution on programming, implementation and partnerships. He earned the invitation, per the roles of the structure, based on his extensive subject-matter expertise, research or practitioner experience, and regional engagement particularly in areas of peace and the fight against violence and extremism.
As a further recognition for the works that he has done in fighting violent extremism, the peacebuilding champion is equally currently serving as an Independent Panel member of the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, GCERF. Headquartered in Geneva in Switzerland, GCERF is the first global effort to support local, community-level initiatives aimed at strengthening resilience against violent extremist agendas.
For a period of four years, Achaleke served as the Global Chair of the Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassadors Network, coordinating the structure in that capacity from 2016 and 2020. These regional and global recognitions have been additionally compensated by awards and other forms of recognition. In 2016, Achaleke was named the Commonwealth Young Person of the Year and honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. That same year, he was equally distinguished as the Most Influential Young Cameroonian of the year 2016.
Fast forward to 2019, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recognized Achaleke among the 35 Chevening Changemakers in the World for the strides that he had made across the globe since going through the Chevening program introduced and run by the United Kingdom. Achaleke had a year before the 2019 distinction, also been distinguished with the Luxembourg Peace Prize in Luxembourg in recognition and support for his work on peace across the world.
Recently, he was named among the 100 Most Influential Young People of African Descent in 2022. In 2021, he was distinguished by the Project Management Institute as one of the “Future 50 Project Leaders” in the world and equally featured in 2021 as a UNESCO real-life hero. In that same year, the dynamic changemaker was featured as a CNN African Voices Changemaker by American news network CNN, further adding to a long list of accolades that Achaleke who has been featured five times in the list of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans, has earned for his works.
