African Leadership Academy seeks to transform Africa by identifying, developing, and connecting the next generation of African leaders. Our Leadership Development formula is relatively simple:

Potential

We comb Africa for youth who show the spark of initiative; who see what can be and strive to make it so.

Practice

Young leaders complete an intensive program of intellectual growth and hands-on leadership development.

Opportunity

Young leaders are guided by a powerful network along with their path to transformative impact in Africa.

About us

African Leadership Academy seeks to enable lasting peace and prosperity in Africa by developing and connecting the continent’s future leaders. Africa’s greatest need is ethical and entrepreneurial leadership. Too often, we invest in addressing the symptoms of bad leadership in Africa: we give blankets, food, and medicine to those impacted by war, poverty, and famine. But these efforts will never stop unless we develop leaders who prevent wars from occurring in the first place, entrepreneurs who create jobs, and scientists who sustainably increase food production and access to healthcare. Our leadership development formula is relatively simple: we believe that by identifying young leaders with immense potential, enabling them to practice leadership, and connecting them with transformative opportunities, we can develop and empower the future Nelson Mandela, the next Wangari Maathai, and Africa’s Bill Gates.

Our Impact

We have consistently demonstrated excellence and have witnessed outstanding success with our flagship curriculum. Our students have been placed into leading global universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Duke, New York University, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, London School of Economics, Ashesi University, University of Cape Town, and more. Our graduating students have thus far collectively earned over $35M in scholarship awards. ALA’s young leaders have already started making an impact on Africa. They have launched 44 non-profit and for-profit enterprises since inception, and many of these enterprises continue to thrive on campus and in students’ home countries as sustainable organizations. The World Economic Forum has recognized five ALA young entrepreneurs for the innovative organizations they have launched in their home countries. Two teams of ALA graduates from the inaugural class won the $10,000 Kathryn Davis Prize for Peace for their projects in Kenya and Morocco. Additionally, African Leadership Academy continues to receive increasing international recognition.