Malala Yousafzai

Co-founder — Malala Fund

About Malala Yousafzai

Key facts Role: Co-founder Organisation: Malala Fund Country: Pakistan Sector: Girls' education (civil society) Headline figures: $10.2m in grants to 57 organisations in 10 countries in the year to March 2025; says its work has reached more than 26 million students In June, Malala Fund's Pakistan arm signed a memorandum of understanding with JazzWorld, the digital platform arm of the Pakistani telecoms group Jazz. The two will use the Tamasha streaming platform and community outreach in districts of all four provinces to push girls' education: Thar in Sindh, Khuzdar in Balochistan, Vehari in Punjab, and Charsadda and Shangla in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The deal is typical of how Malala Yousafzai now uses her power. The Nobel laureate lives in Britain, but her fund's local teams and grantees push governments in Pakistan and elsewhere for laws, budgets and services that keep girls in secondary school. The fund Yousafzai co-founded Malala Fund with her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, in 2013. It works through grantmaking and advocacy. In the year to March 2025 it awarded $10.2m in grants to 57 organisations in 10 countries, and total expenses were $23.3m, according to its 2024–25 annual report. The fund had net assets of about $43m at the end of that year, down from $49.8m, because it spent more than the $16.5m it raised. It says its work has reached more than 26 million students. It also says it helped unlock $7bn in donor commitments and helped raise the global standard for girls' education from nine to 12 years. A new five-year strategy began in April 2025, focused on "restoring, safeguarding and strengthening" girls' right to education. In Pakistan In Pakistan, the annual report credits the fund's Education Champion Network partners with advocacy that helped lead the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to announce free school transport in 2025 for girls in grades 6–8 who live 1.5km or more from school in 10 districts. It also says Teach for Pakistan fellows contributed to a new federal foundational-learning policy. The fund estimates that 6 million adolescent girls in Pakistan are out of school. Its Pakistan country team is led by Dr Nishat Riaz, who joined as chief executive during that year. Background Her story is well known. Born in Mingora in the Swat Valley in 1997, Yousafzai blogged for BBC Urdu about the Taliban's ban on girls' schooling. In October 2012 a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus. She was treated in Birmingham and settled in Britain. She spoke at the United Nations on her 16th birthday in 2013. In 2014, aged 17, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi and became the youngest laureate. She went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Her memoir Finding My Way, about her life after the attack and her Oxford years, was published in October 2025. International platform Her international platform is her main asset, and she has aimed it squarely at Afghanistan. At the UN's International Women's Day commemoration, which opened the 70th Commission on the Status of Women in March 2026, she urged member states to recognise the Taliban's treatment of women and girls as "gender apartheid" and to codify it as a crime under international law. In April, Scotland's First Minister, John Swinney, publicly backed that campaign after meeting her in Edinburgh. In May she opened the Education World Forum. There she said her school in Shangla district now has 1,050 students. At home she remains a contested figure. On the first episode of musician Shehzad Roy's podcast in April 2026, she was asked about claims that she is a "foreign agent". She rejected them, saying, "We didn't even spare Abdul Sattar Edhi," according to The Express Tribune and MAG The Weekly. She also argued that Pakistan is truly represented by the victims of terrorism and those who speak out against it, not by the terrorists. What to watch: whether the Afghanistan push produces formal state backing for codifying gender apartheid in international law, how the JazzWorld partnership performs in its target districts, and how the fund's new strategy fares as its spending runs ahead of its income. Yousafzai ranks 30th because few people in Asia can match her global agenda-setting power, and her fund's focused grantmaking gives it policy traction in Pakistan. She has less formal authority or budget than the office-holders and executives ranked above her. Sources ProPakistani (JazzWorld press release), JazzWorld and Malala Fund Pakistan Partner to Promote Girls' Education , 19 Jun 2026 Malala Fund, Annual Report 2024–2025 (FY to 31 Mar 2025) Malala Fund, Malala Yousafzai at the UN: Justice Cannot Be Selective , 9 Mar 2026 Malala Fund, Scotland backs recognition of gender apartheid in meeting with Malala Yousafzai , 29 Apr 2026 Malala Fund, Malala Yousafzai speaks at the Education World Forum 2026 , 18 May 2026 The Express Tribune, 'We didn't even spare Abdul Sattar Edhi': Malala Yousafzai hits back at foreign agent claims in Shehzad Roy podcast , Apr 2026 MAG The Weekly, It feels like I am responsible for all the problems , 2026 The Truth International, podcast report, 6 Apr 2026 NobelPrize.org, Malala Yousafzai facts Malala Fund, Malala's Story Kirkus Reviews, Finding My Way

Why this entry is on the list

Yousafzai ranks 30th because few people in Asia can match her global agenda-setting power, and her fund's focused grantmaking gives it policy traction in Pakistan. She has less formal authority or budget than the office-holders and executives ranked above her. In the year to March 2025 Malala Fund awarded $10.2m in grants to 57 organisations in 10 countries.