Our Mission
Our mission is to mobilize African diasporan changemakers and their allies in Japan and equip them with resources to contribute to a prosperous and dignified Africa.
Our Vision
To become the largest Afro-Asian networking platform catalyzing international collaboration, promoting knowledge transfer and encouraging Diaspora engagement for sustainable African development.
Meet Our Team
Co-Founder
Pele Voncujovi
Pele is a Ghanaian-Japanese social entrepreneur educated in Ghana, Costa Rica and the USA. He holds a BA in Economics from Middlebury College in Vermont and currently works as a Market Analyst at Rakuten Mobile in Tokyo.
He is passionate about environmental issues pertaining to agriculture and hopes to use his background and network to help bridge opportunities in agricultural technologies between Africa and Asia.
As a co-founder, he hopes that Jaspora can serve as a networking platform strengthening the community network of the African Diaspora in Asia to promote diasporan engagement with the African continent.
Technical Director
Geoffrey Kayiira
Geoffrey Kayiira hails from Uganda and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. He also spent a year as an exchange student at Western Michigan University in Michigan USA.
He is currently based in Tokyo and leads the anglophone recruitment process for the Ashinaga Africa Initiative (AAI) program, a scholarship program providing university scholarships to orphaned students from 49 Sub-Saharan African countries.
He is passionate about computers, IT, innovation, and entrepreneurship and hopes to use his tech expertise to help grow, engage and leverage the Jaspora network through digital innovation.
Co-Founder
Oulimata Gueye
Oulimata (Ouli) hails from Senegal and graduated from Tokyo University with a masters in international cooperation. She lived in Japan for ten years and recently moved back to Senegal where she spearheads Ashinaga’s francophone scholarship recruitment covering over 20 African countries.
Ouli previously worked as an infrastructural consultant in Tokyo and a professional interpreter in English, French, and Japanese. She is passionate about reading, meeting new people, and dancing.
A pan-African at heart, she hopes that Jaspora can contribute to human capital development by connecting the African Diaspora with each other and with their allies for a “win-win” scenario.
Co-Founder
Sena Voncujovi
Sena is currently a Yenching Scholar at Peking University (PKU) and the Chief Editor of the PKU Africa Think Tank in China. He graduated from Middlebury College in the U.S where he studied International Politics & Economics and African Studies as a Davis United World College Scholar.
Post-graduation, he worked at Ashinaga Foundation in Tokyo, providing entrepreneurship, leadership, and career development training to students from 49 African countries. He has also previously served as an adviser to the Ghanaian government for TICAD 7 and aspires to economically and culturally bridge Asia and Africa.
He is passionate about education, Asia-Africa relations, and preserving indigenous African wisdom. He hopes that Jaspora will serve as a platform to accelerate diasporan contributions to African development. He speaks Japanese, English, French, and currently learning Mandarin.