Recently, the annual MTN Business World Executive Breakfast Meeting was held in Accra; the purpose of this event is to provide Ghanaian entrepreneurs, senior management professionals and CEOs with the opportunity to discuss important issues, network and engage with one another. The theme for this year’s meeting was leadership in business, a subject which is close to Fred Swaniker’s heart.
As the co-founder of the ALA, Swaniker is a strong advocate for leadership-focused education, which provides young people with the guidance and the resources they need to become successful entrepreneurs and politicians in the future. He runs the academy with support from its Global Advisory Board, which includes members such as Tunde Folawiyo.
At the event, Swaniker argued that giving teenagers the chance to learn about leadership whilst they are still young will ensure that they have the confidence and the knowledge to become fair, ethical and effective leaders when they reach adulthood. He pointed out that, whilst it is clear that Africa is in need of leaders who can liberate the masses from lives of poverty, there are still very few organisations on the continent that are willing to nurture young people’s talents. Swaniker was adamant that the key to the positive growth and development of African nations lies with the youth of the continent.
His argument appears to have more than a ring of truth to it, as the students at the ALA are already using the skills and knowledge they have acquired at the academy to address issues such as conflict and poverty. One example of this would be the project founded by the ALA graduate Sophie Anunda, which is called ‘I am Kenyan’. Anyone who, like Tunde Folawiyo, is familiar with the difficulties faced by the Kenyan people in recent years will have heard of with this initiative.
Its primary goal is to promote the concepts of patriotism and peace in Kenya, particularly during times when conflict is likely to arise, such as during general elections. After the 2007 presidential elections, several violent clashes between tribes resulted in over 1,500 deaths, and several hundred thousand people being displaced. Many people believe that the ethnicisation of politics is the root cause of this violence; this is often used by politicians as a type of campaign strategy.
The objective of the ‘I am Kenyan’ initiative is achieved mainly through the medium of photography; it is hoped that the powerful images taken will remind the people of this country that they must first identify each other, and themselves, as Kenyan, before they begin to identify themselves and their peers as being of different ethnicities. The project was launched in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, with a public march which was attended by over 1,000 people.