Abstract
Authors: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. We’d like to start with a broad question: You’ve stated in the past that you see leadership as particularly important in the context of management education in Africa. Could you explain why?
Fred Swaniker [FS]: Leadership is particularly important. Not just in management education, but in all education in Africa, because of the weakness of our institutions. In the West we take institutions for granted. In Africa, many of the institutions are weak because our nation-states are relatively younger, the average country in Africa is 60 years old. When you don't have rules and strongly enforced systems of interaction, it's easy to abuse. What it means is that the upside to good leadership is much greater in Africa because if you have good intentions and ethics and values and a break to your vision you can move much, much faster in Africa to transform society than you can anywhere else.
Stephen Naicken [SN]: Africa will have the largest and youngest workforce in the world by 2035. We believe that leadership education will be crucial for these young people so that they can solve the grand challenges and take advantage of the opportunities on the continent.
Leadership is crucial in Africa's management education due to the continent's rapidly evolving economic, social, and political landscape. There is immense potential for growth and innovation, but this also presents unique challenges, such as infrastructure gaps, inequality, and shifting governance. Effective leadership is required to navigate these complexities while fostering inclusive, sustainable development. Equipping students with the “right” leadership skills prepares them to be agents of change, contributing to local and global communities.
FS: I believe that all the leaders in Africa need entrepreneurial thinking, whether they're in the public sector, or in the private sector, or in civil society. They solve complex problems, in creative ways with limited resources. That is the story of Africa, you have to solve complex problems. You have limited resources and you need to be extremely creative to solve those problems. So that's why entrepreneurial thinking needs to be the core competence of all leaders, not just those who are going to be entrepreneurs in the traditional sense of creating businesses.
Authors: In addition to this emphasis on entrepreneurship, how should leadership education in the African context differ from other places, such as Europe and the US? In which ways are the leadership challenges Africans face and the leadership competencies and behavior called for in the African context unique?
SN: Africa's leadership struggles are deeply rooted in its colonial history, which has led to a legacy of dependency and underdevelopment. This contrasts with Europe and the U.S., where leadership models have evolved in more or less stable socio-political environments. African leaders often grapple with issues such as corruption, infrastructural deficits, and political instability, which require a distinct approach to leadership education that emphasizes accountability and ethical governance.
Leadership in Africa is often characterized by “rulership” rather than genuine leadership, leading to a culture and a behavior where leaders prioritize personal gain over public service. Educational programs should focus on cultivating leadership that prioritizes community needs and sustainable development.
Authors: Mr Swaniker, can you expand on this? What does this mean concretely for African leaders in business and/or in politics?
FS: The sense of urgency in Africa, the need for urgency, is much greater than anywhere else. We have to very quickly solve problems and therefore use the lack of strong institutions to our advantage to make rapid change. You have to be a kind of leader who has the ability to think from first principles and to reimagine and reinvent everything: new practice, not just best practice. Think of yourself on a racetrack. The racetrack is prosperity and success, for society or your company. You start out already significantly behind all the other cars on the racetrack. If you have the same car as everyone else, are you ever going to catch up with them? If everyone else is driving a Toyota, you need to have a Lamborghini or Ferrari. Therefore, when you copy best practice, you are automatically dooming yourself to stay behind the rest of the world because they're so far ahead of you. This is a more crucial competence of a leader in Africa than anywhere else, because you have to do things way faster. You've got to think about managing risk. Your ability to tolerate risk and take risk and manage risk is much, much more crucial in this context than others.
Many of the competencies that you need to develop as a leader in Africa are competencies that you need to be able to be a good leader anywhere in the world. The degree to which you might need some of these things is different in Africa.
Authors: Okay, let's get a bit more specific about ALU. You’ve developed a unique approach to instilling a leadership ethos at ALU. Could you tell us about it; how and why did you develop it?
FS: We select differently, teach and develop skills differently and deliberately cultivate relationships. The first thing starts with the selection process. We look at typically five criteria that we believe are important ingredients for leadership. Number one is imagination. A great leader must be able to imagine a better world and think about different ways of doing things. Secondly, we look at resilience. As a leader, you can be knocked down over and over again. Gotta be able to pick yourself up and keep going. Thirdly, we also think passion is important because you're going to have many ups and downs. Fourth, you need good ethics and values, so your character is important. We look for that. Then finally, we'll continue our academic capabilities, but you need that multifaceted selection process that values the four things as much as, or even more than the academic traits because you can always teach someone the academics. If you don't have those other four things, you're not going to be leader.
Also important is that we centered our learning around the problems of society. Ultimately, leaders need to solve problems. The privilege of leadership is that you create change, transform society, transform your company. You solve problems, and therefore, problem-based learning is at the core of this university.
The other thing that we try to infuse here is learning by doing. You learn leadership by leading, you become an entrepreneur by being an entrepreneur. And you need to give them relationships because no matter how good your skills are as a leader, if you don't have the right networks you won't be able to make it through and actually achieve the impact that you could because you need someone who can mentor you, who can guide you, who can invest in you, who can open doors to your first customer, who can help you solve problems. This is especially important in the time of AI. You cannot automate developmental relationships. That comes from in-person or virtual conversations you're having with your peers, with your mentors, with your coaches. That's human.
SN: ALU operates on the belief that education should serve a higher purpose. Students at ALU declare missions rather than traditional majors, which encourages them to align their educational journey with personal and societal goals. This mission-driven approach is designed to foster a sense of responsibility and purpose among students, motivating them to become impactful leaders in their communities.
ALU has set ambitious goals, aiming to develop three million ethical leaders across Africa by 2035. This vision underscores the institution's commitment to transforming leadership on the continent through education that is relevant, impactful, and aligned with Africa's unique context. This vision is rooted in the understanding that Africa requires a new generation of leaders equipped with the values and skills necessary to navigate its complex socioeconomic and political landscape.
ALU is committed to raising ethical leaders who can navigate the complexities of governance and business in Africa. The curriculum integrates discussions on ethics and accountability, aiming to instill a strong sense of integrity among future leaders. This focus is crucial in a continent where leadership often grapples with issues of corruption and mismanagement.
Authors: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about how you cultivate leadership and develop leaders at ALU?
FS: Starting with the problems you want to solve and then working backward to acquire the skills that you need to solve those problems is what this university is trying to do versus just giving you a million of academic tools and then hoping you can find a way to use it later on in life. Mission-based or problem-based learning is core to this. The end goal of what we're trying to do is learning how to learn and learning how to solve problems. The other reason why we believe that should be the end goal is that the world is changing so fast that whatever you study in college quickly becomes out of date. If you've cultivated the sense of problem-solving and becoming a lifelong learner, you can adapt as the world changes.
SN: ALU emphasizes hands-on, real-world experiences as a core part of its curriculum. This includes internships and self-directed projects that prepare students to tackle practical challenges. By engaging students in real-world problem-solving, ALU aims to cultivate leaders who are not only theoretically knowledgeable but also practically adept at addressing Africa's pressing issues. Few people, ten or twenty years removed from college, would say that most of what they know came from a classroom: instead, they would point to skills honed and knowledge gained by performing tasks in a workplace or in other parts of their life. According to research done by the Center for Creative Leadership, leaders in particular, learn 10% of what they know in a classroom setting, 20% through developmental relationships, and 70% by ‘doing through challenging experiences and assignments As a university devoted explicitly to the education of leaders, we ensure that “learning through doing” is part of the academic journey of every student and therefore experiential learning is integral in how we cultivate and develop leaders.
Authors: Can you give us a concrete example?
SN: A group of our engineering students learned from one of our MBA students about the many challenges beekeepers in Africa face. They were inspired to help. They began meeting with various stakeholders and in prototyping hard and software solutions. But there was a strong social and leadership component to this as well—they had to learn to work as a team and to coordinate their work. In the end, they were able to use off-the-shelf components to build an affordable smart beehive system that monitors bee colonies, with the aim of enhancing honey production and environmental sustainability. In all of this, their lecturer played the role of a mentor, giving tips where necessary, but mostly staying out of the way. This project, in my mind, really showcases our commitment to fostering practical solutions to real-world challenges through education and innovation, underpinned by good leadership skills.
Authors: That's an interesting example. What about post-graduation? How have you observed graduates embodying ALU's leadership principles in practice after their studies?
FS: They win the most prestigious fellowships, they're attending the most prestigious graduate schools. They're working for the most prestigious companies and in fact, in Africa, they earn four times the average salary of typical college graduates in Africa. For a traditional college graduate in Africa, it takes five years to get a job. At ALU, 70 to 90% of every class has a job within six months. They're rated highly by employers, four out of five on average. They're much more entrepreneurial. I think our research shows that 6% of most university graduates in the world form their own ventures and at ALU it is 28%. The model by all objective measures works better than all these universities that are taking thousand years, but we do this in 10 years and we've done this with a fraction of the budget and right now the average student loan debt is, $2000 to go to ALU versus $85,000 to go to Harvard.
Authors: In both your Bachelor and MBA programs, you have students from across the continent. Are there any particular challenges or opportunities that result from this pan-African cohort?
SN: With students from over 30+ African countries, we have been able to harness diversity both as an institutional value and in practice to enable a pan-African educational experience.
In the classroom, it allows us to explore the grand challenges and global opportunities that the continent faces from different perspectives. It has enabled students to develop skills such as active listening and empathy when discussing cross-border contentious issues (e.g. River Nile Dam projects).
It has also challenged our faculty in their teaching and learning development. Academic tutors have learned to create safe spaces and utilize norm settings to enable an environment where students do not attack individuals or groups but learn to listen, interrogate, and challenge ideas. This is underpinned by the expectation setting that our students adhere to the institutional values of Ownership, Restless Excellence, Continuous Learning, Integrity, and Humility.
Students have the space to learn about the challenges and opportunities the continent faces from the different perspectives of their peers from different backgrounds. We find that when we bring them together to work on projects and entrepreneurial ventures, this enables them to develop solutions that transcend borders.
Authors: Thank you very much!
Footnotes
