Aya Chebbi

Aya Chebbi was born in 1988 in Dahmani, a small town in northwest Tunisia. While still a university student of international relations, she started a personal blog she named Proudly Tunisian just before the country erupted in revolt. When the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution that opened the Arab Spring swept the streets, she was among the young people who spent their days at the protests, documenting and sharing what was happening in writing and photography. Her words travelled far beyond Tunisia, and she became known as one of the first female bloggers of the Arab Spring.

Aya did not stop at her own country's borders. She came to believe that Africa's young people — the largest youth population on Earth — belonged at the centre of decisions about their own future. In 2015 she founded the Afrika Youth Movement, which grew into one of the continent's largest youth-led networks, linking thousands of young activists across dozens of countries through the idea of Pan-Africanism: that Africans, wherever they live, share one story and one destiny.

In November 2018 the African Union made history by appointing Aya Chebbi as its first-ever Special Envoy on Youth. At just 31 years old she became the youngest senior official in the organisation's history and the youngest diplomat in the Chairperson's cabinet, carrying the hopes of young Africans into rooms where decisions are made. During her mandate she gathered more than 1,500 young people from 44 countries to write the Africa Young Women's Beijing+25 Manifesto, a charter of what girls and women across the continent need to thrive.

After her term ended in 2021, Aya founded the Nala Feminist Collective, known as Nalafem — a multigenerational alliance of African women in politics and activism working together for change. Across her movements and campaigns, her message stays simple and bold: young people should not be guests at the table, but the ones helping to build it.