Edward Keenan Jacobs

Edward Keenan Jacobs is a Programme Manager at the Mandela Rhodes Foundation (MRF), where he helps lead the design and delivery of the flagship Leadership Development Programme. This is a transformative, in-residence experience that supports postgraduate students from across the African continent through a year or two of deep personal growth. The programme cultivates the inner and relational capacities needed to lead with integrity, empathy, and vision.

He is guided by the values of love, curiosity, and presence that shape how he thinks, relates, and works. With nearly a decade of experience working with young people across South Africa and Africa, he cares deeply about learning alongside others and helping shape spaces that support meaningful personal and social transformation.

Before joining MRF in 2023, he served as the Advocacy and Empowerment Lead at Justice Desk Africa, a human rights organisation operating in 10 African countries. In this role, he shaped and led the organisation’s advocacy strategy, supported national and global policy influence, trained external partners, and represented the organisation through media and public engagements. Before that, he ran the iNtsika yeThemba Project at Justice Desk Africa, an initiative for teenage boys in Cape Town aimed at dismantling harmful masculinities and nurturing young men as champions for gender justice.

Earlier in his career, he worked as a research assistant at the Safety and Violence Initiative (SaVI) at the University of Cape Town, contributing to national policy on violence prevention and to South Africa’s White Paper on Safety and Security. He also worked for five years as a youth mentor and presenter with Elevate Education, South Africa's largest provider of study skills seminars, mentoring and coaching high school and undergraduate students to strengthen their study techniques, confidence and exam performance across South Africa and the broader African continent.

He holds a BA Law degree, as well as an Honours and Master’s in Political Science from Stellenbosch University, where he graduated cum laude with a thesis on voter behaviour in South Africa.

He lives in Cape Town and volunteers with the Steenberg Adventure Squad, a Cape Flats initiative that reconnects kids to nature, community, and self through hikes and outdoor play. When he is not working or in the mountains, he is likely reading, meditating, deep into a podcast, or watching football with far too much passion.