CyberSafe Youth Initiative connects underserved young people to digital skills, workforce pathways, and economic opportunity — before a technology-driven economy leaves them out.
The Problem
The same technology that is creating new industries and new wealth is systematically leaving behind the communities with the least access to the skills needed to participate. This is not a talent gap. It is an access gap — and it is solvable.
CyberSafe Youth Initiative was founded in 2021 with a single premise: the young people growing up in underserved communities in the U.S. and across Africa are not behind because of capacity. They are behind because no one built the infrastructure to bring them forward.
Flagship Initiative
CyberBridge is a $1.2 million, three-year public-private co-financed initiative designed to scale digital workforce readiness to 50,000 learners across approximately 100 training hubs in the U.S. and Africa by 2028.
The model coordinates telecom providers, technology firms, educational institutions, and regional development organizations to deliver technical training, mentorship, and direct employment pathways from a single, integrated infrastructure.
Programme Timeline
In the Field
Programs
Geographic Reach
CyberSafe Youth Initiative operates across four countries, with each geography serving a distinct role in the broader model. The U.S. expansion — in Oakland and the Mississippi Delta — proves that the same digital exclusion patterns that exist in West Africa exist in the wealthiest country on earth.
The insight from each geography informs the others. The infrastructure CyberBridge is building is a single, exportable model — not four separate programmes.
Partners
Leadership
Mansur Kasali · Founder & Director
Mansur Kasali founded the CyberSafe Youth Initiative in 2021 — at fifteen years old. The original mission was direct: address rising cybercrime recruitment of high school students in his home city of Ibadan, Nigeria, by giving them digital skills and pathways into legitimate careers in technology.
Five years later, the initiative has reached more than 5,000 students across four countries with 60% female participation. The flagship CyberBridge programme — a $1.2 million, three-year public-private partnership — is now scaling toward 50,000 learners by 2028.
His broader work extends across economic inclusion and policy: as Founder and Chair of EmpowerHer Capital, as a panelist at the World Bank–IMF Spring Meetings (the youngest in the institution's 82-year history to address it in a technical capacity), and through engagements with the Clinton Global Initiative, the Federal Reserve, and the Board of the When We Grow Up Foundation.
The throughline across his work is consistent: the institutional infrastructure that decides who gets opportunity has historically failed underserved communities — and the tools to change that already exist.
Full profile · www.mansurkasali.com →
Press & Recognition
Whether you're a student looking for a pathway, an organization that wants to partner, or a funder who believes in building economic access from the ground up — there is a place for you in this work.