Mr Fred Swaniker, a 39-year-old Ghanaian who is on a mission to change
Africa — one student at a time. Listed by Forbes Magazine in 2011 as one
of the 10 youngest powermen in Africa, Mr Swaniker is the founder of
the Johannesburg-based African Leadership Academy. PHOTO | COURTESY
Summary
- ALU is a chapter in the story of Mr Fred Swaniker, a 39-year-old Ghanaian who is on a mission to change Africa — one student at a time.
- Listed by Forbes Magazine in 2011 as one of the 10 youngest powermen in Africa, Mr Swaniker is the founder of the Johannesburg-based African Leadership Academy – a co-educational high school which recruits outstanding students from across the continent and prepares them for a future in leadership.
- “The launch of African Leadership University is an opportunity for Africa as a whole to revisit its curricula, the relationship between lectures and students, and that between training institutions and productive systems,” Dr Machel said.
Fred Swaniker founded the African Leadership University in Mauritius and
hopes to have a network of 25 world-class universities with 10,000
students each.
Two years ago, Seketo Sophia, 21, was
attending lectures at Maasai Mara University in Narok County. A student
of Forestry and an environmental enthusiast, she was also running the
“Tree for School” project in which she got friends and family to plant a
tree and donate money to education institutions.
Today,
she is one of 31 Kenyans out of the 176 students on the founding campus
of the African Leadership University (ALU) in Mauritius — the first of a
network of 25 world-class universities which the founder believes will
provide answers to Africa’s challenges.
They
were selected out of 6,000 applications that came from across the
continent, making ALU one of the most competitive universities in the
world.
“The process of waiting to
know if you have been selected took long days and nights. They wanted us
to display our ability to clearly put out our thoughts while observing
time. We got to explore a lot fields, from education to history,” Sophia
told Lifestyle in an interview at the Beau Plan campus just outside the
capital Port Louis.
ALU is a chapter
in the story of Mr Fred Swaniker, a 39-year-old Ghanaian who is on a
mission to change Africa — one student at a time.
Listed by Forbes Magazine
in 2011 as one of the 10 youngest powermen in Africa, Mr Swaniker is
the founder of the Johannesburg-based African Leadership Academy – a
co-educational high school which recruits outstanding students from
across the continent and prepares them for a future in leadership.
Always
ahead of his time, at the age of 18, Mr Swaniker was the principal of a
school run by his mother in Botswana. By then he had lived in three
other African countries – Ghana, the Gambia, and Zimbabwe. Just like his
mother, his father, a lawyer, was always ready to apply his
professional skills wherever he was called upon.
When
US President Barack Obama visited South Africa in 2013, he showered
praise on Mr Swaniker for using his expertise to help other young
Africans develop their leadership skills “so that they can come back and
put those skills to use serving their communities, starting businesses,
creating jobs”.
FIXING LEADERSHIP
With
hundreds of students, most of them from poor backgrounds, having
emerged from the leadership academy to enter the hallowed halls of top
universities in the world – including America’s Stanford, Harvard,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology – and graduated to work globally,
Mr Swaniker’s place as one of the continent’s most influential people
was perhaps already cemented by the success of the leadership academy.
Yet
last month, school administrators, leaders and journalists from across
the world descended on the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius to witness,
yet again, an unveiling of another of Mr Swaniker’s grand plans – this
special model of a university.
“We cannot fix Africa unless we fix its leadership,” he told Lifestyle on
the sidelines of the assembly – a weekly two-hour session in which the
students showcase and hone their creativity with activities such as
skits, speeches and dances.
Mr Swaniker says Africa’s problems are too enormous and their solutions too urgent for things to be done the usual way.
“Our
evolution of universities could take between 25 and 40 years. Our hope
is that our graduates will go to form governments. We want to create
exceptional leaderships, you know, filling the public sector with world
class leaders. Others will be entrepreneurs building large-scale
enterprises,” Mr Swaniker says.
An
admirer of former US President J.F. Kennedy, Mr Swaniker considers his
vision to build 25 universities in Africa, each admitting 10,000
students, a daunting, yet achievable, feat.
“Just
like President Kennedy dreamt of landing the first American on the
moon, our mission might seem impossible now. But like Kennedy’s America,
we are taking radical measures because Africa needs moon shot
thinking,” he says.
The college is
not modelled on traditional university teaching and research. It focuses
not on majors, but on the grand challenges Africa is facing.
“Educators
are not the traditional professor; they are facilitators, who include
retired executives, recent university grads (graduates), and mid-career
professionals,” he says.
But how does beginning with 176 students fit into the grand scheme of rolling out 25 campuses each carrying 10,000 students?
“Once
the foundation is well established, the roll-out in other countries
will be faster. We shall have campuses all over Africa including Kenya. I
mean across the continent where need is the greatest and where the
environment is friendly. The innovation we bring requires visionary
governments that are not threatened by our innovation,” he says.
VISIONARY GOVERNMENT
Mauritius,
known more for its vibrant leisure and sugar industry, was chosen to
host the founding campus for its friendly regulations and working
systems. The country recently opened its doors to African visitors, who
don’t require a visa for up to a 90-day visit. Mr Swaniker also says he
was able to secure work permits for all his 70 staff in record time.
“If
you are thinking about pan-African institutions you do as Mauritius has
done. Why is it easier for a Chinese or a US citizen to come to an
African country than it is for an African? We talk of a population of
one billion people but that is meaningless if we don’t integrate. The
Sh2 trillion dollars we (Africa) jointly command will be meaningless if
we have no synergy.”
During the
opening ceremony of the college, Mauritius President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim
called on African countries to build a culture of good governance and
entrepreneurship, and invest in science and technology.
“Africa’s
research output is only one per cent of the world, yet its population
is 12 per cent. We welcome ALU as we have a shared vision,” said the
former University of Mauritius professor of organic chemistry.
When
more ALU campuses are up and running, a prospective student will apply
to the system with choices and they will be allocated a college. And
while they are selected on the basis of their academic excellence in
their secondary school examinations, the greater emphasis is on their
leadership potential.
“We are
recruiting leaders in their own right, some of these students had
started their own non-governmental organisations at 17. Up to 40 per
cent of our inaugural class dropped out of colleges back home. One young
man from Morocco had graduated and started his masters, but he dropped
out to come here,” says Swaniker.
So
from where does he draw the inspiration to push these grand ideas to
fruition every day when there are many comfortable jobs beckoning him?
“I
am passionately in love with Africa. I grew up when the ‘African
rising’ conversation had not come. I used to think all of Africa was a
basket case. But when I went to Botswana I saw fibre optic and a working
government, I fell in love with Africa,” he says.
Mr
Swaniker attended Stanford Business School where he was named an Arjay
Miller Scholar of Stanford University, an honour bestowed on students
graduating top of class.
“I came back
to Africa against my mother’s advice. In Africa you don’t have to give a
reason why you go to work. You see impact every day,” he says.
To
found the Africa Leadership Academy, whose inaugural dean was former
Alliance High School principal Christopher Khaemba, who now works for
the Nairobi County government, Mr Swaniker mobilised resources using
networks which he built while working for Mckinsey, the consulting firm
that advises most of the world’s most influential organisations.
“It has exceeded all my wildest imagination,” he says.
But
this success was also his frustration. “About 80 per cent of the
graduates have been leaving Africa. So I said we need an MIT here. And
here we are,” he says.
INFLUENTIAL ORGANISATION
The Johannesburg-based African
Leadership Academy – a co-educational high school which recruits
outstanding students from across the continent and prepares them for a
future in leadership. PHOTO | COURTESY
But
the speed of the realisation of Mr Swaniker’s dream is also dependent
on the reception by governments, some of which are wary of the young
people coming out of the universities.
“It
is not easy communicating the vision of what we are trying to do
because it is really away from convention. Many regulatory regimes in
Africa want to see a given number of things first before issuing
accreditation. We believe there is a need to balance between meeting
these standards and the need to move with the world,” Mr Swaniker says.
The
college works with corporate sponsors to meet the cost of the
programmes. Students are required to do internship in the companies and
work thereafter for a period to be agreed on.
“We
are also exploring many ways including having those who can pay enough
to subsidise those who can’t. These include students from outside Africa
who will pay more. We are also developing a loan scheme to build a
sustainable system,” Mr Swaniker says.
The
ALU model also relies heavily on technology with students being taught
via hi-tech e-learning material and peer-to-peer interaction which cuts
down the need for faculty staff.
“What
makes great education is not the buildings or fancy facilities. What
makes a great institution is great students, a great curriculum and
great teachers,” he says.
Arjuna
Costa, a partner at Omidyar Network, founders of eBay and the largest
investors at ALU, says the company’s interest in the college is in the
lack of ethical leadership both in the public and private spheres across
Africa.
“The present graduates might
have the book learning and the certificate, but they don’t have the
requisite skills and overall requirement to fit into jobs,” says Mr
Costa.
Coca-Cola, IBM, Boston Consulting Group and Standard Chartered Bank are also involved.
Mr
Thomas Mbajjwe, 18, a student from central Uganda, told Lifestyle that
the institution had exposed him to a wide range of possibilities.
“I am choosing between business and computer science,” he says.
Mr
Mbajjwe recalls the rigorous selection process, including interviews
with representatives of the corporates involved that wanted to select
students. This is in line with the ALU model under which each year a
student spends eight months on campus and four months in the work place.
“We
design our curriculum with employers. We break barriers between
universities and the world. Solving real problems for real organisations
begins from day one,” said Khurram Masood, the head of college.
A
class at ALU involves students sitting in small groups with their
laptops, some of them with music on, perhaps to emphasise the
informality of it all. The students are expected to discover their
problem and work with others towards solving it.
They
first go through a four-week induction programme meant to disabuse them
of what Ronald Dore labelled, in 1976, the “diploma disease” – the
obsession and the excessive value attached to the certificates acquired
from college.
Other students in the
pioneering class include Mr Jeremy Kisorio, a victim of the 2007/2008
post-election violence in Eldoret, and Piet Motaloata from the Limpopo
Province of South who had been an actuarial science student at the
University of the Free State when he heard of Mr Swaniker and his dream
for the continent.
“The traditional training model just wasn’t for me as I hope to start my own companies after this,” he told Lifestyle.
PRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS
The
college, whose chancellor is former South African President Nelson
Mandela’s widow Graca Machel, collaborates with Glasgow Caledonian
University. The university will, for the first few years, issue ALU
graduates with degrees.
In a fireside
interview with Glasgow Caledonian University vice-chancellor Pamela
Gillies, Dr Machel allayed fears that the youth being trained would be a
catalyst for social instability on the continent.
She
said the reason many graduates in Africa do not find employment is
because of the divorce between the academic institutions and
requirements in the work place.
“The
launch of African Leadership University is an opportunity for Africa as a
whole to revisit its curricula, the relationship between lectures and
students, and that between training institutions and productive
systems,” Dr Machel said.
So what if
the graduates of this grand vision in whom the college and the partner
companies have invested heavily leave the continent?
“What
we are inculcating in these young people is a sense of opportunity, not
obligation. But we selected them in the first place because of their
passion for Africa. We are reinforcing that passion. A truly
entrepreneurial person will see the great business opportunity here in
Africa,” Mr Swaniker says.
He adds
that the challenge with brain drain in Africa is a problem of numbers.
“That is why we are aiming so high that even if a few leave the
continent, we shall have enough to go around and build enough positive
force to change Africa,” says Mr Swaniker, who lives with his wife
Amanda Johnson, an entrepreneur, on the island.
For
now, as Mr Swaniker envisions an Africa that will be transformed by
young graduates of a holistic education, Sophia is already thinking of
her contribution.
“I look forward to
be in a position to formulate policies and create awareness about issues
affecting our communities. These issues include taking care of our
environment and embracing positive cultural values,” she says.
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