Seven years ago, Fred Swaniker and Acha Leke formed the African Leadership Network (ALN) to place Africa at the center of the global summit landscape. Swaniker and Leke observed that at summits such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, most of the experts discussing Africa-related issues were not African.
Today, ALN provides a necessary platform to harness the voices and perspectives of the next generation of African leaders. This past November, the ALN concluded its seventh annual leadership gathering, where renowned leaders such as Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala gathered to discuss the “Art of Leading.”
In conversation with Ventures Africa, Acha Leke, Co-Founder of the African Leadership Network underscores the significance of transforming Africa through leadership and diversity.
Idil Issa for Ventures Africa (VA): The guest list for the African Leadership Network’s (ALN) Annual Gathering is always replete with powerful and impactful speakers. What are the factors you at ALN consider while curating the list of speakers?
Acha Leke (AL): What we’ve tried to do at ALN is assemble, what we call, the current generation of African leaders. These are leaders who, like my Co-Founder Fred Swaniker and I, want to bring prosperity to the continent. And so we have, over the years, selected members who share that vision and passion, and invited these members to invite like-minded colleagues and friends to join the network. We currently have over 2000 members in our database, and over the last two years, we’ve opened up the gathering to more than just members. As a result, folks who have come to the gathering have experienced it, realised what it’s all about, and we then rely on them to recommend other like-minded friends and colleagues to join the gathering.
VA: Specifically regarding speakers, as the people you describe are those who attend the gathering, in terms of speakers, how do you find and identify people who can create content for the gathering?
AL: For us, the gathering is not a conference, so it’s not about the speakers. When you go to regular conferences, it’s about putting speakers on stage and everyone wants to listen to them. We believe the most important people in the gathering are the attendees, and so, we structure it around the attendees. And these are all amazing Africans and friends of Africa who in their own rights are doing quite incredible things. We also believe in learning from people who have been there ahead of us, so we invite a few. This year we had Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, we had Strive Masiyiwa, we had ABC Orjiakor, Wendy Luhabe. We invite them so that we can learn from them. We also invite the next generation, typically students or alums from the African Leadership Academy, to join. But the way we really think about it, is that the gathering is about the attendees and not about the speakers.
VA: What is the big picture that ALN is trying to create, and what other factors must work in tandem for this picture to become a reality?
AL: Overall, the African leadership Group, which is a network of a number of institutions, is trying to transform Africa through leadership. That’s what we’re trying to do. ALN, in particular, is a network of the current generation of leaders. We have, for example, African Leadership Academy, which is a network of future leaders; these are typically 15 to 18-year-olds. We have the African Leadership University, which is a university, so its students are a bit older. We have the ALU School of Business, where the first program is an Executive MBA Program, where the students are again a bit older. But at the end of the day, what ALN is trying to do is bring African leaders together, of typically 30 to 45 years, who aspire to do one thing: to bring prosperity to Africa.
Because we believe we’ve had 3 generations of leaders on the continent, we had the Kwame Nkrumahs and the Julius Nyereres, who brought us independence. We then had a generation of leaders who we believe destroyed all those gains. I won’t name them, but we know who they are. We then had the generation of leaders, or we have today, who’ve brought back growth to the continent. Whatever we may say about them, whether it’s an Obasanjo, or a Kagame, or a Kaberuka, people like that have brought growth, even Nelson Mandela and what he did for the continent. We believe, as we foster the 4th generation of African leaders, that our role is and should be, to bring prosperity. And so what we do is assemble leaders who share that vision and passion, and we are working to make that happen.
VA: During one of the sessions on day one of ALN 2016, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was asked what sort of governance do we need in our countries to give us the staying power to diversify. For you personally, what would your answer to that question be?
AL: The problem with our continent, the issue with Africa, has been a failure of leadership. We believe, either we can wait for a good leader to emerge, the next Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the next Kagame; or we can create the leaders Africa needs. And we believe that the future of Africa as a continent is too important to leave the emergence of good leaders to chance. And so what we strive to do is actually create these leaders that Africa needs. For me, what’s absolutely critical for the continent is execution. We have plans, we’ve developed plans, and we have leaders who have plans; where we fail is where the rubber hits the road: on execution. We need a lot more leaders who know how to execute, who are held accountable, who know how to track and monitor, and who know what’s happening with the execution of their plans. But also, we need followers who can hold leaders accountable, and say, if you don’t deliver, then we’ll, for example, vote you out. I think one of the big issues for me on the continent is leadership, but in particular actually executing and delivering on promises.
VA: Diversity of people and resources is an important but often under-discussed topic in Africa, and oftentimes has led to divisions within societies. How do you think our leaders can use diversity to the continent’s advantage instead?
AL: Diversity is extremely important. In my day job, I work at McKinsey, and we just put out a report called Women Matter Africa. What we show there is that diverse teams, in particular gender diverse teams, are much more successful. We can now show that companies that have more women in senior management positions and on boards perform better, and are 20 percent more profitable overall, than the average. We had long discussions, actually, during the gathering these past few days, about gender diversity, and about what we need to do to improve it in Africa today. Relative to the global average, Africa is doing quite well. The continent is doing better than the global average: five percent of CEOs, 22 percent of executives, 14-15 percent of boards, 22-24 percent of parliamentarians, are women. But we have a long way to go to achieve gender equality. And so, we always say, it’s the right thing to do, but the business case also shows that gender equality is important to improve and increase profitability for companies. There’s a lot more that needs to be done and we are still far from where we need to be. This is something that requires, not just women, but men and women to work together to make it happen.
VA: That’s a perfect segue to the next question. This year’s ALN Annual Gathering saw the introduction of a new initiative, ALN Women. What are your aspirations for this initiative, and what do you hope it will achieve?
AL: When we set up ALN, we wanted it to be a platform; a platform to bring amazing people together, while we step out of the way and let the magic happen. And we’ve seen magic happen across many dimensions. This year, a few women got together and said we want to create ALN Women, which we are hugely excited about and very supportive of. What we’d like to see is a platform emerge. We don’t know which direction it’s going to go, and we think there are a number of areas that the group can focus on.
But we’ve said, you get together, tell us what you want to do, and tell us how ALN can support you. There are already a number of ideas around creating a mentorship program and creating a separate ALN Annual Gathering session where we really discuss in-depth some of the issues women face across the board. But the one thing we’ve said in these conversations is, we want to make sure that the men are included. This is not just an issue for women to resolve; men have to be part and parcel of the solution. Fred and I are looking forward to seeing how this new initiative evolves, and we are very, very excited about it.
Kindly listen to the podcast below:
