Sarah Mulwah of Botswana has been an environmental consultant and a marketing manager for a nature reserve where she helped track white rhinos for a conservation project.

The fellowship is the flagship program of President Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. The group toured FLEXLAB (pictured), and heard presentations on the Cookstove Project and Cyclotron Road, among other activities.

How to begin to ease seemingly overwhelming energy challenges there is what brought 25 young Africans to Dixon Ridge Farms, a sprawling, 800-acre walnut-growing operation in Winters.

DAVIS, Calif. -- At a solar array in this Sacramento Valley university town, two dozen of sub-Saharan Africa's brightest young minds are looking for answers to their energy challenges.

Twenty-five young African leaders are taking part in an energy-themed institute at UC Davis starting Monday.  The group will spend six weeks at the school through the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

Over the next six weeks, 25 young African leaders will be at the University of California, Davis, to leverage the campus’s energy expertise and better equip themselves to tackle the enormous energy challenges on their continent.

Twenty-five young African leaders will leverage the world leadership of the University of California, Davis, in zero-net energy and its global experience to tackle energy challenges in their countries.

Under US President Barak Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative, 25 Africans leaders will head to the University of California, Davis for the first and only energy-themed institute offered through the Mandela Washington Fellowship.

Twenty-five young African leaders will leverage the world leadership of the University of California, Davis, in zero-net energy and its global experience to tackle energy challenges in their countries.