Growing up in small agricultural town called Kitali in northern Rift Valley, Kenya, Maxwell Simba discovered from a young age that that he had a passion for the arts, specifically acting. Today at African Leadership Academy, Maxwell is often found not only flexing his acting muscles with his peers in the Ubuntu Theatre Troupe on campus but also behind the camera documenting events as he aspires to pursue a path in film directing.

Okong’o Kinyanjui has a true passion for TED and the TED Fellows program. Originally from Kenya and currently in his final year of studies at Quest University in Canada, he first interned with TED in 2017. As a Bezos Scholar, and thanks to the partnership between the Bezos Family Foundation and African Leadership Academy, Okong’o was selected to intern at the TED Global conference that took place in Arusha, Tanzania in 2017.

Speaking about her decision to participate in the competition, Noemi said, “I asked myself, ‘If I were not at ALA would I still have raised my hand and wanted to go for this?’ and I don’t think I would have….I’ve heard the founders of the school saying ‘We should always try to do the hard things and I kept that in mind.”

Tafadzwa Matika ’10 always had a passion for pursuing a career in Public Health, but he could hardly imagine combining this journey with a concurrent career path through agriculture. After…

This past month has seen ALA alumnus Spencer Horne’s innovative logistics company, Cloudline, win big. The revolutionary startup not only earned Spencer a spot on this year’s Quartz Africa Innovators List but was also announced the winner of Santam’s Safety Ideas Challenge – walking away with R100 000 in incubator funding and seed capital.

As a Biomedical Engineering student at Duke University, Júlia Sroda Agudogo ’11 designed a low-cost non-invasive cervical screening tool for women, earning first place at the Rice 360 Global Health Design Competition. She has now taken this further as part of the core founding team that envisioned, created, and runs The Calla Campaign that recently designed and optimized a novel cervical visualization device, called a Callascope Inserter, for use in low-resource settings.

Liberian President, George Weah emphasized the importance of education for Liberia’s development at the official launch of SMART Liberia’s Changemakers Village earlier this year, providing a stamp of approval for Marvin Tarawally ’11, James Kiawoin ’08 and their team who co-founded SMART Liberia to provide much needed support for students and entrepreneurs in Liberia. Since its founding, the organization has worked with over 25 schools and directly impacted over 500 students.

When ALA student Tapiwa Gambura purchased her very first camera in November 2018, she never imagined that less than a year later she would be the winner of a major film festival. Nevertheless, on October 6th, Tapiwa celebrated as she received a $2,500 check for winning the Jozi Film Festival and Discovery Network’s “Real Stories By Real People” award with her short film, Redefining the Road.

Junior Beauclaire Mbanya (’14), currently studying Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester, was recently awarded a Davis Project for Peace grant for his program “Togetherness for Peace”, which he hosted in his hometown of Douala, Cameroon.

Deepshikha Parmessur (’13), was recently appointed Prime Minister at the Mauritius National Youth Parliament, becoming the first female holder of the office, and adding a prominent layer to her growing profile in the public sector.