about us
our
leadership
Our Chancellor
Graça Machel
Graça Machel, an accomplished Mozambican politician, international advocate for women and children’s rights serves as the Chancellor of ALC. Machel was the Minister of Education in Mozambique and led a movement to cut the illiteracy rate by 22 percent, and to increase the school-going population from 400,000 to 1.6 million.
Machel was awarded the InterAction Humanitarian award in 1997 and was made an honorary Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the request of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007.
She has also founded various organisations that work to ensure the rights of families and communities across Africa. These include the Graça Machel Trust, an organisation which protects women and children’s rights and promotes women’s leadership across Africa. The Trust also runs the Graça Machel Scholarships for Women.
She is a Founding Member of the Elders, an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights. Machel is the Founder of the Foundation of Community Development in Mozambique. She is also involved, in various capacities, in other organisations, including: the Africa Progress Panel and the UN Millennium Development Goals Advocates Panel. She is an Eminent Person of the UN Foundation. Machel served as the First Lady of South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s Presidency and as First Lady of Mozambique during Samora Machel’s presidency.
ALC is privileged and honoured to have Graça Machel as our chancellor. We are confident that her experience in education will be of tremendous value in strengthening ALC’s governance and helping us achieve our goal to develop the future leaders of Africa.
Chairman of our Global Advisory Council
Donald Kaberuka
Kaberuka is a Rwandan economist and was the president of the African Development Bank from September 2005 until September 2015. He studied at the University of Dar es Salaam as an undergraduate and obtained his MPhil in Development Studies from University of East Anglia in 1979. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Glasgow. Prior to serving as President of the African Development Bank, Kaberuka served as Minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda for 8 years. He is credited with helping to stabilize the Rwandan economy from the effects of the 1994 genocide.
Since stepping down as President of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka has been appointed to the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation and as Senior Advisor to “TPG/Satya”, a consortium jointly owned by two private equity firms: (a) US-based TPG and (b) London-based Satya Capital, affiliated with Sudanese billionaire, Mo Ibrahim.
Our Founder
Fred Swaniker
Fred was recognized by US President Obama in 2010 and again in 2013 for his work in developing Africa’s future leaders. He has been recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, by Forbes Magazine as one of the top ten young ‘power men’ in Africa, and by Echoing Green as one of the fifteen ‘best emerging social entrepreneurs in the world’. He is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network and was a TED Fellow in 2009. Fred began his professional career as a consultant with McKinsey and Company and has an MBA from Stanford Business School, where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, a distinction awarded to the top 10% of each graduating class at the business school. He was born in Ghana but has lived and worked in about 10 different African countries.
Fred is deeply passionate about Africa and believes that the missing ingredient on the continent is good leadership. In line with this, Fred founded the African Leadership ‘Group’—an ecosystem of organizations that includes African Leadership Academy, African Leadership Network, Africa Advisory Group, and of course, ALC. Collectively, these institutions aim to transform Africa by identifying, developing, and connecting three million game-changing leaders for Africa by 2060.