(Now, I know I already wrote about wrote about “Criticizing Africa” before and talked about leadership, I’d like to look at this from a slightly different angle this time.)

Admittedly, I am a leadership junkie.  I really like to read and learn about leadership skills, techniques, and best practices.  I also really like teaching it and helping others discover themselves as people and as budding vanguards.  I believe that effective leadership is truly the answer to every problem that ails the world because good leaders can set the right agenda, inspire the masses to execute the agenda, and then can lead groups to and through the next challenge.

So, I naturally gravitate towards organizations like the African Leadership Academy, which is a continent-wide leadership magnet school for Africa’s best and brightest high school students.  Students come from all over Africa to complete the last two years of their high school education, receive leadership and entrepreneurship training, become grounded in African studies, and gain near-guaranteed acceptance into an Ivy League college of their choice.  With an acceptance rate rivaling the most selective institutions in the world, ALA attracts students who are high-achieving individuals who are already becoming leaders in their own rite.  ALA is a difference-maker, though, in that it grounds the students in the academic study of leadership, specifically that of moral leadership—something lacking in much of Africa.

I had the pleasure to spend a day with ALA staff and alumni recently at an event in New York and I was so impressed by everyone involved.  The students are as amazing as one would expect—poised, driven, and brilliant—and the staff have clearly modeled the way for them.  I found everyone to be humble, insightful, and fight-you-to-the-death passionate.  Everyone on-board at ALA believes that leadership is the answer to all of Africa’s problems and they’re fighting tooth and nail each day to make sure that Africa looks vastly different in 2031 under the leadership of these young Mandelas, than it looks in 2011 under the leadership of the old Mugabes.

Watch this video and let us know what your impressions are of ALA.  Do you think it can work?