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ALA in the News

See how ALA is seen in the eyes of the world's  media.

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Building the Foundation > Building the Foundation > The Academy > Milestones

Milestones

ALA’s unique curriculum has some early and important validation from a very successful college placement record this past spring.  Here is some data about ALA’s first class of eighty-eight students who graduate in June 2010.  Even though many of these youth come from very difficult backgrounds (refugee camps, orphans, limited formal education, etc.), sixty-five of the eighty-eight were offered places at the world’s most prestigious universities. Every single Ivy League university and most of the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the US admitted at least one student. Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford all admitted at least three students. An ALA student from Uganda became the first African ever to win the Morehead-Cain scholarship at the University of North Carolina. William (our windmill builder from Malawi) is at Dartmouth studying engineering.  And even better is the fact that fifty of these young leaders essentially have full scholarships, earning about $10 million in scholarship funding for their four years of study.  Those not in the States on full scholarships (about thirty-five of our students) have remained in Africa for further study or are pursuing an entrepreneurial path.

For a sense of the unusual and inspiring backgrounds of the young leaders in the African Leadership Academy program, this short (~5 min) documentary was made about William Kamkwamba, an ALA student from Malawi who during his teenage years brought electricity to his rural village by building windmills from scrap materials.  In 2009, William wrote a bestselling book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, chosen as one of Amazon's Top Ten Books of 2009.  William is now studying engineering at Dartmouth and looks forward to developing wind power projects to improve the electricity infrastructure in Malawi.

At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting September 2010 in NYC, Ziggy Yeni, recent graduate of  African Leadership Academy and currently attending Yale, was a panelist for the CGI session “Youth Unemployment: The Next Great Global Challenge”. Ziggy does a great job representing ALA and presenting his perspective as a young African about the need for education that has an entrepreneurial mindset. This session is nearly one hour in length but tune in between minutes 19:45 and 24:30 for some interesting commentary from Ziggy Yeni.

At the ALA Leadership Symposium in 2009, ALA student, Fatoumata Binetou Fall, presented her vision for improved management of water resources in Africa -- Harnessing the Power of Water.  Fatoumata Binetou Fall is from Dakar, Senegal.  She became interested in water issues after the long water shortages in her city in 2007, when she and her younger sister had to walk long distances to fetch water for their family.  Before coming to ALA, Fatoumata was the top student at Mariama Ba, an all-girls secondary school reserved for the top 30 female performers on the Senegal national primary school examinations.  Fatoumata speaks six languages: Wolog, English, French, Spanish, Swahili and Arabic.  She is currently attending Harvard College. 

Other Recent Milestones

  • William Kamkwamba, member of ALA’s inaugural class, wrote a best-selling book about using junkyard scraps to build a windmill and bring electricity to his rural Malawian village. His book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, was named one of Amazon.com’s top ten books of 2009.
  • In November 2009, three ALA students were among the top 10 performers in the world on their Cambridge International AS-Level exams.
  • In December 2009, ALA was featured alongside Apple Computer and India’s Pantaloon in the opening chapter of Getting to Plan B, a book by London Business School Professor John Mullins showcasing how start-ups successfully navigate alternative paths to success.
  • In June 2010, ALA’s inaugural graduating class of 93 collectively generated over US $9.5M in scholarship support and were accepted into the world’s top universities including Cornell (4), Amherst (3), Dartmouth (3), Harvard (3), Stanford (3), Yale (3), Duke (2), Brown, Columbia, MIT, Oxford, Durham, London School of Economics, and Princeton.
  • In November 2010, Ernst & Young selected Fred Swaniker and Chris Bradford as one of five finalists in the “Social Entrepreneurship” Category of its 2010 World Entrepreneur Awards.