MALIAN
Niankoro Yeah Samaké was born 27th February 1969 in Ouelessebougou, Mali, West Africa to parents Tiecourafing Samaké and Sanamba Doumbia.
Yeah Samaké comes from a very historic lineage. His great grandfather, five generations ago, was the founder of Ouelessebougou and his own father was the first Muslim in his family line.
Like every other family in his village he grew up in modest circumstances. However his father, being a visionary, decided that Yeah and his seventeen brothers and sisters (from three different wives) would all attend at least till high school. In that day and age, this was almost unheard of as children were used as helpers in the farms and the household. Illiterate himself, Tiecourafing was rebuked by his peers for doing this but he remained adamant and said, “My family will go hungry but my children will never know the darkness of illiteracy”. There were many nights that the Samaké children did go hungry. On those nights, Samaké remembers his mothers tying their stomachs with a handkerchief so the pain of hunger would not overcome the need for sleep. After middle school, there was no high school in Ouelessebougou, so Yeah left his village for the city of Bamako, 80 km away. There, he attended high school and graduated. He then studied and graduated with his Bachelors in Teaching English as a Second Language at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENSUP) in Bamako. Even then, Yeah felt the need to serve his people. He returned to Ouelessebougou to teach. However at that time, the government was unable to pay its teachers and so Yeah volunteered at the school teaching children for free.
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HUMANITARIAN
Since 2004, Yeah Samaké has been involved in humanitarian efforts in two major organizations. Being one of the few lucky ones to receive an education thanks to his fathers commitment to education, Yeah Samaké believed that the power to breaking the cycle of poverty would be found in supplying the people of Mali with the tools and resources to accessible education, healthcare, clean energy, clean water and leadership training.
From 2004 to 2013, as the Executive Director of the Daily Dose which later became the Mali Rising Foundation, Yeah Samaké:
As the Co-founder and Field Specialist of Empower Mali from 2013 to present, Yeah Samaké has :
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MAYOR
In 2009, Yeah Samake's political ambitions took center stage. His commune of Oueléssébougou was looking to elect a new Mayor. The previous mayor had served a 10 year term in which little had been done to improve the commune.
Initially Yeah’s younger brother was on the ballot, but when Yeah expressed an interest, he ceded his position so Yeah could run. Yeah ran and won with 86% of the vote in Ouélessébougou. He became mayor over 44 different villages and a population of 65000+ people. Yeah focused on ending corruption and increasing government transparency as Mayor. He proved that his native town was not condemned to poverty.
In the six years from 2009 to 2015, the following changes have happened since Yeah had taken over Oueléssébougou:
In 2011, Yeah was also elected Vice President of the League of Mayors. There are 703 different municipalities in the league. This role gave Samaké the opportunity to better understand his fellow mayors concerns and how to best address how their individual communes could improve.
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AMBASSADOR
In May2015, Samaké was appointed by the President of Mali, H.E Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, to serve as the Ambassador of Mali to 10 countries: India, the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Republic of Bhutan, Kingdom of Malaysia, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and Kingdom of Thailand.
Since August 2015, Ambassador Samaké has worked diligently to grow educational, economic, social and technological ties that serve the interests of the people of Mali residing in India and these 9 other countries. Here are just a few of the key highlights of his term so far.
2015
2016
Ambassador Samake presented his letters of credence to four of the countries he covers:
2017
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