Fred Swaniker
| Frederick Kenneth Swaniker | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Nationality | Ghanaian |
| Occupation | entrepreneur, educator |
| Known for | Co-founder of African Leadership Academy |
Fred Swaniker (born 1976) is a Ghanaian serial entrepreneur and leadership development expert. He has launched four organizations that aim to develop leaders, primarily in Africa. He is the chairman and founder of the African Leadership Academy, an institution located outside Johannesburg in South Africa that is developing 6,000 transformative leaders for Africa over a 50-year period. He is also the founder of African Leadership Network, Global Leadership Adventures, and African Leadership University which is opening multiple universities across Africa with the aim of grooming 3 million leaders by 2060.
His father was a lawyer and magistrate; his mother is an educator. Both are Ghanaian, but he had lived in four countries in Africa by the time he was 18. He attended Macalester College in Minnesota. He was initially employed by McKinsey & Company in Johannesburg, before attending the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California, where he received an MBA and was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, a distinction awarded to the top 10% of each graduating class at Stanford.
While at Stanford, Swaniker wrote the business plan for African Leadership Academy, a special pan-African school that would groom the future leaders of Africa. This was based on his belief that the single largest impediment to Africa's progress was the lack of good leadership. He used his Silicon Valley connections to find financial backing and launched the Academy immediately after graduating in 2004. The full-time residential boarding school teaches leadership and entrepreneurial skills to students from across Africa while preparing them for universities around the world. Approximately 80% of graduates from the Academy attend top universities in the USA such as Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, Cornell University, Princeton University, Notre Dame and University of Rochester. By 2017, almost 1,000 future leaders had joined the ranks of the Academy. For most students, tuition is waived, provided they promise to return to Africa after graduating from college.
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