eet Fred Swaniker, one of the founders of the Johannesburg based African Leadership Academy (ALA). His is a truly inspiring story of an African who is committed to transforming the continent by positively influencing its future leadership. “When you spend so much time in Africa, you cannot help but be passionate about the continent,” Swaniker says. He was born in Ghana and left the country when he was four. He grew up in a number of African countries namely the Gambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. With each part of Africa he lived in, a strong desire to influence its destiny grew which eventually led to the establishment of the ALA in September 2008. Founding academic institutions seems to run in his family, starting with his grandmother who set up a secondary school in Ghana and his mother who formed Mount Pleasant English Medium School in Botswana. Swaniker was put in charge of Mount Pleasant at the age of 18. “After my time as headmaster at the school, I pursued university studies in the United States of America where I obtained a BA in economics from Macalester College. I then went on to pursue an MBA at Stanford Business School and it was there that I met one of ALA co-founders - Chris Bradford - who shares the same passion I have for the African continent,” Swaniker recalls.
After university, Swaniker was involved in founding Global Leadership Adventures, a leadership development program for youth with sites in ten countries. He gained additional entrepreneurial experience by founding Synexa Life Sciences in Cape Town, a biotechnology company that today employs about 30 South African scientists. His work experience also includes acting as a consultant for McKinsey and Company where he provided strategic advice to the management teams of large companies in Africa. It was during his tenure at McKinsey in Nigeria in 2003 that the ALA idea was formed. “Everything I saw around me made me realise the urgent need for more effective and ethical leaders. Together with Chris and the other founders of ALA, Acha Leke and Peter Mombaur, we asked ourselves the question: what corrective steps could we take to create good leaders in Africa that would bring about fundamental change beyond our lifetimes?” The four embarked on a process of studying leadership around the world to determine if there was a clear pattern that was common to good leaders. They identified certain ‘ingredients’ that if developed in a systematic way would enable them to bring about good leaders. This is what inspired the establishment of ALA, a donor funded institution that has evaluated almost 10,000 candidates of which 400 have been accepted for its two year
program. The academy has contacts across the continent who identify teenagers who possess leadership potential for consideration. “We want to work with them from a young age as history shows that a good number of leaders began the journey to achievement during their formative years. Nelson Mandela for example was in his 20’s when he joined the ANC youth league and technology innovators Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were only teenagers when they conceived Microsoft and Facebook respectively,” he notes. William Kamkwamba may very well be the next Mark Zuckerberg. He was kicked out of school when he was 14 for lack of school fees but the young leader was determined to make something of his life. He noticed how windy it was in his village in Malawi and read about windmills. Using a tractor fan and bicycle parts, he set up one that was able to produce enough electricity to power a small radio. “When we met him, he could barely speak English,” Swaniker said during an address at his alma mater Stanford recently. “We were concerned that he would not be able to cope but eventually decided to give him a chance and bring him to the academy. William not only graduated from the school, he was accepted to Dartmouth and is just about to complete his first year there. In 2009, he published a book entitled ‘The boy who harnessed the wind’ which made it to number 7 on the Amazon. com best seller list. His vision is to
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