Top African business executives should nurture future African leaders

Kilemi Mwiria

Last Tuesday, Dr James Mwangi, Equity Bank’s CEO, hosted a group of 30 top Kenyan business and professional community to introduce and fundraise for the African Leadership Academy (ALA) based in Johannesburg. It is headed by the former Principal of Alliance High School, Mr Christopher Khaemba and has an international advisory board where Mwangi serves. The academy’s mission is to help solve, "…Africa’s greatest problem: leadership…" The founders of the academy are four young modern day African missionaries who opted to use their expensive degrees from Stanford to ensure that Africa’s rich resources are utilised to uplift the lives of Africa’s poor majority. Sadly, Africa enjoys the distinction of being the only continent where numbers of persons living below the poverty line are increasing with every year. The founders have one big well-intentioned dream for Africa.

The academy identifies potential young leaders and exposes them to a world-class curriculum in leadership, entrepreneurship, education, health, governance and other sectors of development. Top African business community and established professionals also mentor them. The academy’s target is 6,000 top leaders in the next 50 years. The founders look up to the top African business and professional leaders to champion this cause. In Kenya, Mwangi has led the way by donating up $350,000 and providing mentoring opportunities for the academy’s students. Mwangi and other self-made Africans can be great role models for potential African leaders by demonstrating that with the right attitude and hard work, Africans can equal the Bill Gates of this world, especially given that Africa is the only remaining world’s investment frontier.

Because Africa cannot afford another 50 years of bad leadership, there is need to accelerate the mission of The African Leadership Academy. One way is to establish branches of the academy in other regions of Africa for increased output. If Kenya had such an academy, training would be more targeted with much larger numbers than could come from one African institution. We could also identify already existing top schools to implement the African Leadership Academy’s well-tested curriculum.

To be more inclusive, selection of potential students should de-emphasise written and spoken English as this discriminates against children from poor families who also lack the confidence to sail through such tests or to demonstrate their undiscovered potential. The composition of Africa’s future leaders must reflect the fact that the majority of Africans are poor. This principle should also be reflected in internship and business support for graduates of these leadership academies.

Little progress will, however, be accomplished if more attention is not directed to investing in the right economic and political environment in which the young leaders have to operate. Future leaders need to be nurtured to participate in active politics early in life. Potential mentors should prefer supporting them for leadership over their more established age mates and business associates because the biggest obstacle to budding African leaders’ ability to penetrate political leadership is lack of resources and appropriate professional networks. If we cannot get our youth to join politics, they will not be part of the solution to Africa’s governance crisis. Meanwhile, we should recognise that there are many more potential African leaders working in the West because we have not done enough to woo them back. What has kept them away could have the same effect on graduates of Africa’s leadership academies.

Finally, more Africans must come out to provide the resources for establishing and supporting African leadership academies. It is shameful that 80 per cent of the sponsors of the African leadership Academy, which is based in Africa, are non-African. Who should have more interest in resolving Africa’s leadership problems than the African? Anti social primitive accumulation of wealth is not in the long interest of both the accumulators and their future generations.