AFRICAN LEADERSHIP UNIVERSITY : BANKING ON STRONG INSTITUTIONS

Nelson Mandela once said: “Every now and then a generation is called upon to be great. You can be that generation.”

This generation has the potential to be the greatest generation Africa has ever seen, the greatest generation the whole world has ever seen. We have all the resources to ensure greatness, the only thing that would obstruct our ascendancy got to be the fruits of bad leadership and weak institutions. Ultimately the only way to ensure we overcome these obstructions is to create leaders who would fight for strong institutions that would remain standing long after their terms in office are completed. Fred SWANIKER  (pictured below) is also of this belief and in 2008 opened the African Leadership Academy (ALA) to help give life to this vision. Last year he announced the birth the African Leadership University (ALU).

Fred Swaniker

ALU will be a chain of universities set to open in countries starting with Mauritius –which opens its gates this September- but will extend to Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco in later years. The chain of universities will comprise of 25 different campuses’ in different geographies with a capacity of 10,000 students; this means that at any given time 250,000 leaders will be on the path to changing Africa for the better. This is in the hope that they will produce graduates that will be in the same league as those of Harvard, Stanford and Yale but for one tenth of the cost. Admittedly ALU does not have the legacy and history of these Ivy League institutions but they intend to leverage off advances in technology and unique African solutions to make the university world class. The academic year will be split into three semesters, one of which will be spent doing an internship at one of the universities global partner: Coca Cola, Standard Chartered, BioTherm Energy etc. A degree will in turn last 3 years, with one extra year for engineering courses. Currently the university offers 6 courses: Business, Entrepreneurship, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Humanities and Electrical Engineering. The founders decided on these particular fields because as the current situation stands graduates with these skill sets are in high demand.

The criterion for admission is simple: learning potential, leadership potential, passion for change and self-motivation. It goes without saying that if they manage to pull this off it could result in one million qualified leaders over the next 5 years. Leaders who have knowledge that is beyond their books and who know who to transform this knowledge into practical African solutions. For more anyone who would like to be a part of this university by means of admission the regular decision process is open until the 31st of March.

Please follow the link to learn more this innovative institution: http://www.alueducation.com/

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