fyeahafrica:

Fred Swaniker, an entrepreneur with a passion for solving social problems, believes that many of Africa’s predicaments boil down to a lack of adequate leadership.

To help change that, during the last nine years he has focused his energy on the creation and development of an elite pan-African secondary school aimed at fostering the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs.

The African Leadership Academy (ALA) opened in January 2008 in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, and currently has around 200 students from 40 countries.

The 15-19 year-old girls and boys take A-Level courses in biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, languages and social sciences.

At the same time they follow a curriculum that prepares them in leadership, entrepreneurship and African studies.

Candidates can now apply directly though the school’s website but Mr Swaniker used to send scouts all over Africa to find the right students.

The selection process is very competitive. The school claims that in the last four years “over 10,000 young leaders representing 48 African nations have applied to be part of ALA.”

Since most of the students come from underprivileged backgrounds, they get full scholarships in the form of “forgivable loans” that they have to repay, with interest, if by the age of 25 they are not working in Africa and commit themselves to do so for at least 10 years.

Mr Swaniker told the BBC’s series African Dream that the academy “aims to multiply the effects, the impact that I as one individual could have.”

“I thought that if I can create an organisation that can find young entrepreneurs, young leaders in every country in Africa - that has the potential to really change the continent; if I could build an institution that could develop them, then they could achieve much more than I could achieve by myself.”

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(Source: dynamicafrica)