The Global Social Venture Competition
African Leadership Academy recently participated as one of 9 finalists out of 130 organizations who entered the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) held at Columbia University in New York. African Leadership Academy was the only nonprofit organization to reach the finals of the 2006 competition.  GSVC is widely recognized as the most prestigious business plan competition for organizations launched by current and former MBA students with a social mission. It is held every year at Columbia Business School, and is co-sponsored by Haas Business School (UC Berkeley), London Business School, the Indian School of Business, and the Goldman Sachs Foundation. 

While ALA did not win the competition, being selected as one of the 9 finalists was wonderful recognition for ALA. Most notable was the "honorable mention" that ALA received from one of the judges in the GSVC. Jonathan Greenblatt, co-Founder of Ethos Water (now a division of Starbucks), wrote the following about ALA on his weekly blog on the company's website: "All the businesses were noteworthy, but I thought that I might take a moment to highlight the winners and to call attention to one plan in particular ... ALA is a non-profit, full-time school that aspires to educate the next generation of African leaders from across the socio-economic spectrum - the founders already have raised 80% of the funds needed to build a campus in South Africa and completed a successful pilot last summer - you can expect to be reading about ALA in the New York Times and mainstream media in the very near-term."

The full text of Jonathan's blog can be read here:

http://www.ethoswater.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/4/11/The-Next-Generation-of-Social-Entrepreneurs

We have received a few questions over the last few months from people about whether ALA is based in Johannesburg or Cape Town, so we thought we would take this opportunity to clarify this question for all. ALA is based in Johannesburg, and our campus is to be built in a scenic, semi-rural area in the outskirts of Johannesburg. We can understand the confusion around ALA's location, because when we originally conceived of ALA, we had planned to locate it in Cape Town. We even went as far as identifying a potential site in Cape Town, and launched our summer school (in a rented facility) in Cape Town. However, an important lesson we learned from the summer school is that Cape Town is not the best location for ALA (although it was/is perfect for the summer school, which serves a slightly different mission).

The outskirts of Johannesburg is ideal for ALA for the following reasons: First, a lot of the top African leaders that we intend to frequently bring to ALA as guest speakers, etc are overwhelmingly based in Johannesburg. During the summer school, it was difficult for us to bring such leaders down to Cape Town (a 2 hour flight), but we have much easier access to them in Johannesburg. Second, Johannesburg is the 'melting pot' for professionals from literally every corner of Africa. As such, we realized it would be much more feasible to recruit mentors from all over Africa who are working in Johannesburg and match them to the ALA students coming from all over Africa. Third, a Johannesburg location also reduces costs for students and families (who would have to pay for extra flights to Cape Town, since Johannesburg is the main point of entry into South Africa). Finally, the vast majority of the corporations who can sponsor scholarships for students to attend the Academy are based in Johannesburg. It is much easier to convince a corporation to sponsor a student if the company's executives can easily visit the school and observe its impact. For these and other reasons, we decided to move the location of ALA from Cape Town (where it was originally conceived) to Johannesburg, and this is where our campus will be built and expected to stay for hundreds of years!

ALA was scheduled to open in September 2007 (less than 17 months away). That was based on the assumption that we would raise all the funds we required to build the campus in 2005, or, alternatively, that we would launch by renting a temporary campus. Our recent campus commitment, however, does not allow us to finish building our campus in time for a September 2007 launch. Instead of launching in a less-than-ideal temporary facility, which would add to the total fundraising requirement, we have decided to delay the launch of the school by a year. This will give us enough time to finish our custom-designed campus and to have adequate funding to ensure a smooth launch. We view ALA as a project that will last for hundreds of years, developing generations of leaders for Africa just as Eton College has in England or Harvard University has in the United States. As such, a delay of 1 year in such a time frame does not affect our long-term impact, in our opinion. While we agonized over the decision to delay by a year, we ultimately felt it was better to launch ALA on the right footing than to launch on our previously defined timeline.

With this revised launch date, below is what ALA’s timeline of key milestones now looks like:

There is a great deal of work to be done over the next 29 months years before launching ALA. Even though we currently have a team of four full-time staff and a host of advisors, we need more outstanding people to help us pull this ambitious project off.  Over the next 6 months, we are searching for two key full-time people and 3-4 volunteers. Brief descriptions of the people we are looking to hire are below:

1. Send your ideas: info@africanleadershipacademy.com
2. Refer a candidate: As mentioned, ALA is looking to hire our inaugural Head of School, as well as a Director of Development to lead our fund-raising efforts with the US-based African Leadership Foundation. If you know of any excellent candidates for these positions, please refer them to us!
3. Donate to the Academy!  We are in the midst of a major fundraising campaign that will allow us to build our team.  You can make a donation to this exciting vision via credit card by visiting www.africanleadershipacademy.com/support.asp
4. Assist with fund-raising - please e-mail us to find out more: info@africanleadershipacademy.com