The AL for Governance network and all of us at African Leadership Academy are honoured to have esteemed Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the keynote speaker at the upcoming AL for Governance Gathering!


As a Liberian politician and economist, Madam Sirleaf was the first woman to be elected head of state of an African country when she served as the President of the Republic of Liberia in 2005, two years after the nation’s civil war ended.
In recognition of her leadership of Liberia during the challenging period of transition after the country’s devastating years of conflict and for the positive changes that took place in Liberia under her administration, Madam Sirleaf was the first female recipient awarded the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership in 2017.

She is a founding member of the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership and a recipient of the African Women of Substance Award. The then Organisation of African Unity (now called African Union) named her and six others to a body that investigated the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Johnson Sirleaf was one of three recipients, along with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karmān, of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts to further women’s rights.
Join us on the 8th – 9th October 2021 as the AL for Governance network draws leaders in government and public service to discuss the role of youth in strengthening the public sector.