Members of the Global Advisory Board, including Tunde Folawiyo have helped the African Leadership Academy to become what it is today; one of the leading educational institutes for young people in Africa. It was founded by Fred Swaniker, a man from Ghana, who wanted to find a way to tackle some of Africa’s biggest problems; conflict and poverty.

After giving the matter a great deal of thought, he concluded that there was one crucial element which almost every African country was lacking; strong leadership. Knowing that an attempt to reform the current leaders would be an exercise in futility, he decided to focus instead on the younger generation, realising that the solution was to create a school which was specifically designed to nurture the most brilliant young minds of Africa, and to give them the tools and the education they needed to become tomorrow’s leaders.

Initially, Swaniker and his colleagues launched the GLA, otherwise known as Global Leadership Adventures. This summer programme was set up in 2004, and was such a success that Swaniker decided to go ahead with the establishment of a two-year boarding school, which would later become known as the African Leadership Academy.

Today, those teaching at the academy go to great lengths to educate the students about the issues which Africa faces today, and encourage them to voice their opinions on how these matters should be resolved. One example of this would be the International Youth Day Essay competition which the academy launched this year. This competition allows young people to offer their thoughts on what needs to be done to establish peace and prosperity in African countries.

Participants were asked to discuss the ways in which governments, non-profits and businesses can work together to utilise the youth potential of Africa, in order to encourage wealth and development. They were required to make sure that the ideas they presented in their essays were measurable, practical, and relatively easy to implement across the entire continent.

Several hundred young people, from over 20 African nations chose to get involved in the competition, with ten essays being chosen by the judging panel at the ALA. The writers of these essays originated from Lesotho, Kenya, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Rwanda and finally, the home country of Tunde Folawiyo, Nigeria. The winner was a Nigerian student by the name of Mayowa Okelana, whose essay centred about the topic of female empowerment and education reform.