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African Leadership Academy
There comes a time in every continent when there is an urgent need to breed leaders for the next generation. For this reason, the world-class African Leadership Academy was established.
The African Leadership Academy (ALA) is a residential, secondary institution located in the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa for 15–18 year-olds, from all 54 African nations and around the world.
Founded in 2004 by Fred Swaniker, Chris Bradford, Peter Mombaur, and Acha Leke, ALA officially opened in September 2008 with an inaugural class of 97 students. To achieve this goal, ALA teaches a two-year curriculum in African Studies and Entrepreneurial Leadership, as well as the usual academic core subjects.
The founders of ALA, around 2004 launched Global Leadership Adventures, a summer program that would be a precursor to ALA.
In 2006, Swaniker and Bradford were recognized, by Echoing Green, who described them as two of the 15 best emerging social entrepreneurs in the world. In 2007 the initial campus was confirmed, and Christopher Khaemba was announced as the inaugural Dean of the School.
The African Leadership Academy uses certain criteria for admission. To find out if you have what it takes to get into this first-class academy, the following must be in the affirmative:
Take leadership roles in family, school, or community.
Assist peers or family members when they need help.
Is your advice sought when others make important decisions?
ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Do the you often think about how you can improve the world around you?
Do you act when you see a need in your community?
Do you enjoy thinking about new ideas and creating new products?
PASSION FOR AFRICA
Do you have an African dream?
Are you excited about spending two years in a community of individuals from a wide range of cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds from across the continent?
Are you excited about playing a role in making Africa a peaceful and prosperous continent?
COMMITMENT TO SERVICE
Are you passionate about uplifting your community?
Do you dream of a world in which all people are able to realize their dreams?
Have you demonstrated this passion at school or in your community?
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Applicants are expected to be in the top 10% of their class academically.
Information of academic prowess will be gotten from National Examinations, marks and comments made on applicants’ school reports.
Finalists are expected to write an entrance examination.
Students are encouraged to participate in a fitness activity.However sport is not a strong part of the Academy, neither is it done competitively nor invested in as other aspects of ALA.
Student clubs and organizations
Students participate in a variety of clubs, and each student is expected to create or run either a “Student-run Business”, an “Original idea for Development”, or a “Community Service Project”.
Student run businesses (SRBs)
The student run businesses only operate on campus, and include:
◾Rub-a-Dub-Dub – laundry service
◾AgroExperts – Supplies chickens and eggs to the dining hall
◾Chani’s Café – gourmet snacks
◾Midas Touch – Men’s grooming
◾GigaVault – student-run bank
◾Footprints – merchandising – t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.
◾Duka Bora – tuck shop
◾Papa Mustafa’s – a pizzeria
◾iALA – ALA’s own student-run tech support group (internal)
◾ALAMedia – ALA’s media network (external)
◾Ten50 – student-run on-campus barbershop and hair salon
Community service projects
ALA students are involved in local schools and communities through Community Service Projects (CSPs). Projects include tutoring programs on campus and community clean-up campaigns. CSPs tend to be multi-year projects that get managed by successive students.
Current CSPs include:
◾Farm enlargement and roadside market outlet design
◾Biodiesel production for sustainable electricity
◾Library redesign and management for a poor school
◾Recycable art – art from trash project
◾Creche education program – reading and colours
◾Youth gardening project – building vertical gardens so that schools can feed their students
◾After school soccer league for at-risk youth
◾Day care redesign and development
◾Youth empowerment Finding the Good in Us
Original Ideas for Development
Original Ideas for Development (OIDs), are projects that have a wide scope and run beyond the students’ time at ALA. Current OIDs include:
◾GSIE – Global Strategy on Inclusive Education – helping children with disabilities gain access to education
◾HACA – cancer awareness campaign
◾Baobab – capturing oral histories online to preserve and facilitate cross-cultural understanding
◾Greendorm – environmentally friendly living on campus (internal)
◾Almas (formerly Nique) – using a beauty creme to fund the creation and distribution of an anti-malarial creme
◾MathmaHelp – production of educational math DVDs
◾Oyama – A crowd-sourcing platform for young African entrepreneurs
◾African Baccalaureate – Africa’s own curriculum design
◾Cyca – A social networking platform to alleviate misleading preconceptions about the African continent
◾Radio Skika- A radio station geared towards sparking intellectual inquiry amongst African youth by exploring some of the continent’s most pressing issues
Supervised trips
Students explore the local community, Africa, and the world, by participating in an excursion program. Outdoors enthusiasts participate in weekend hiking trips in the Drakensberg mountains and longer excursions during holiday periods, while scientists may apply to attend the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in the United States.
Summer Program
The Academy offers high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors, from across the world, the opportunity to apply to spend three weeks of their summer as Global Scholars.
As well as the Board of Governors, the Academy’s Board of Advisors is composed of African and global luminaries in business, leadership development, secondary education, and social entrepreneurship. The Advisory Board provides strategic input and guidance to the ALA management team.
Get more information about the African Leadership Academy @ http://www.africanleadershipacademy.org/site
We Are One!
I strongly believe that despite our differences and apparent dissimilarities, we are all one and the same. So many principles contradicting this belief have cropped up in the world in the recent past. We have now ‘graduated’ from racial discrimination to discrimination of background, sex, religion, physical features, sexual orientation, level of literacy and so many more obscure forms of discrimination. This concept of discrimination has troubled me for years. We are all who we are, discrimination is therefore uncalled-for. We go out everyday to meet people of various backgrounds. If we see that this man or this woman is black, illiterate, poor, crippled,gay/lesbian, muslim/christian/occultist, we should not discriminate against such a person. I see people that discriminate as having a mental disorder because, if they didn’t, they would not feel superior to anyone. Creating that pseudo-sensation of superiority, depicts a psychologically troubled person. Today, the world is in a cold war against this discrimination phenomenon because it is the root of most crimes. If we can all feel that sense of unity that binds us together as one people, most of these crimes and acts of terrorism would be put in proper check. To prove the fact that we are one, astronomers have studied and come up with the postulate that we were all formed through a cosmic explosion that simultaneously led to the formation of the universe. This postulate is known today as the ‘Big Bang Theory’. This theory never stated that we were formed from seven billion explosions but ONE explosion. The ‘We Are One’ theme song of Disney’s ‘Lion King’ said it all.
We overcame the racial discrimination by an encouraging percentage thus, we have a black man in the White House. As we have noticed, our victory over racial discrimination has done us a whole lot of good, but what about the newly discovered forms of discrimination? We have now resorted to male-female discrimination, gay-straight discrimination, african-American discrimination, elite-illiterate discrimination. Why all these? Why do we feel superior? Why do we feel better than one another? Why do we feel richer, stronger,more fortunate? United we stand, but divided we fall like dominoes. So many unanswered question, but the truth still remains that WE ARE ONE; whether we choose to accept it or not. We will still keep on fighting for equality in all ramifications till the death. Don’t sit there and be satisfied with the discrimination. Join the fight against it. Individually, we could achieve little, but doing it together, we are powerful. People commit suicides everyday due to depression caused by this discrimination. Stand up against it. We Are One. #AfricaRising!!
LIMITLESS AS GODS
Often times, we tell ourselves that we are not good enough to do this or to do that. Most times it is because we feel we are limited to certain resources. Honestly, I am one of the few people that believe that humans are created without a limit. Simply put, we are all unlimited. We are designed in such a way that only one person has the potency to set a limit to our abilities; that person is you. As the Christians put it, “we are made in the image of God”. This speaks of the truth of our power. If we can see above our environment, we can achieve the ‘impossible’.
Most world renowned people that have achieved great feats and left a mark in our hearts as people that define the concept of success, used this principle. Basically, this principle of ‘limitlessness’ has taken over the globe. We currently live in a world where people that are able to break the chains that inhibit their greatness are idolised. Most scientific revolutions are children of this concept. They all started as thoughts in the mind then, they developed into paradigms and then into models, now, they are generally accepted. If we should all set limits for ourselves, we would not even be able or willing to get up from our beds in the mornings. Being limitless, is a thing of the mind. I always say that “the mind is the greatest weapon given to humans by nature”. Our minds are so powerful that if we have something we want to achieve and without doubt at all, we believe that we will achieve it, we will. Our minds are the ‘wrecking balls’ that demolish whatever limitations we may have. No feat is ‘impossible’ because, we have minds that are programmed to achieve them. Developing our imagination, simultaneously develops our minds. If we can imagine problem-solving paradigms, ‘utopian’ ideas that are above our present capacity and set our minds to achieve them, we will. Ever wondered where the word ‘mindset’ came from? I have. I came with the thesis that the word talks about where the mind is set, how the mind is set and why the mind is set. I likened it to a bullet, yes a bullet, if a bullet is shot at a target, aimed with dexterous precision, it gets there knocking off any thing (limitation) in its path. So is the functioning of our minds. Setting limits for ourselves would only hamper our progress
For this reason, I love my continent, Africa. We do not accept the limits that other people or the world sets for us, we define ourselves. We are people that are not afraid to break off the chains binding our development. We see ourselves as the best continent on the globe because we have people that think like gods. They believe that they are created without any boundaries whatsoever. People that are not satisfied with the current state of the continent. They are not willing to accept that Africa is poor or sated with corruption. They change this by changing themselves via changing their thoughts and imaginations. We are who we say we are. The only version of us people see is the version we present to them. Whatever we set our minds to, we can achieve. Thus, we are as limitless as we choose to be. To illustrate, here is the story of a man who saw himself as being limitless and rose from his physical limitations to glory, visit:http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/opinion/kristof-from-south-sudan-to-yale.xml
This Is Africa!
On the outside, Africa is portrayed as a ‘jungle’ that serves as a habitat to a barbaric multitude. The amusing part of the story is that some Africans agree with this postulate. But we, the enlightened Africans, know that the beauty, glory, and potential of our continent are bursting out the seams. We know that if we do not speak up about the true image of our motherland, the world will be oblivious of it. Africa, home to the cream of the global society, is a continent formed on the foundation of love, happiness, unity, loyalty, sacrifice, morality, and hospitality. Africa cannot be said to be a backward continent; ‘developing’ may be acceptable but definitely not ‘backward’. Moreover, when a continent is said to be ‘developing’, it paints a picture of room for further improvement, but when a continent is said to be ‘developed’ it means a different thing. Such a continent can be related to a ball thrown up in the air: once it gets to its maximum height (‘developed’ stage of continents), it has no where else to go but DOWN. Africa has been made an object of ridicule because for so long, it has been developing. If we noticed as in the medical field, a foetus usually takes an expected estimated period of nine months before it can be said to be ready to exit the protection and support arenas provided by its mother. A child that is born premature usually has almost everything premature i.e. most physical features are premature, but a child that takes the adequate time to develop or longer usually has an unarguable edge over the one that ‘rushed’ out. This paradigm is used to explain the reason Africa is taking so long to join her peers in the league of developed countries.
On the inside, Africa is glorious. We are Africa! Like every othe continent on the globe, Africa has her good spots as well as her bad ones. The beauty of Africa can be attributed to the vast dominance of the presence of nature. Africa is one of the most surreal continents on the planet with the most amazing and most amazing sites that not only treat the eyes but also the soul. Various beautiful sites in Africa include: the great Pyramids of Egypt, the Sphinx, Victoria Falls, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar beach, the Virunga Mountains, the Omo River Region, Marrakech in Morocco, Cape Town in South Africa, the Hot Air Balloon Safari, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Seychelles Island, the Robin Island, Kruger National Park, the Table Mountain in South Africa. For more on the beauty of Africa, visit http://www.royalwings.com/africa/.
Africa my Africa. If I could only describe every aspect of my motherland, we would be reading this post for the next 24 hours.
In the beginning….#AfricaRising
Always a first time, always a commencement of a journey, always an ignition of a stupendously large dream. In the beginning was an unexplored and underachieving Africa. When we decided to step out of the darkness and bring Africa to light, we began the creation story.
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