Africa Future Leaders Initiative

The Africa Future Leaders Initiative (AFLI) is an upcoming social-responsibility initiative by the SLI aimed at developing leadership at grassroots level. 

If you're based in Africa, doing business in Africa or planning to engage in a new venture in Africa you're probably aware of the fact that right now, this continent and its people seem to be entering an exciting period of growth and progress. Most observers agree that several African countries are already in the early phases of an economic and socio-political revival that offers new hope for their citizens and exciting opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs alike.

However, the 'critical bottleneck' for this process is the lack of trained and equipped leadership at nearly all levels of African society. While some governments, NGO's and international investors are making courageous efforts to address this leadership shortage, more needs to be done to develop future leaders for Africa. Consider for instance that over 20 per cent of Africa's population is aged between 15 and 24 years, and over 40 per cent is under 15 years of age. This means that the challenge to develop and retain emerging leaders with the potential to meet the demands of a globalized environment is set to escalate even further. 

Because SLI accepts the social responsibility to help build a better, stronger and sustainable world for future generations (see our Core Values), we are currently brainstorming about setting up a project to help develop African leadership at grassroots level. Provisionally named the "Africa Future Leaders Project", the aim would be to provide a vehicle through which our professional leadership experts can invest some of our knowledge, skills and time into emerging leadership.

At this stage, we're inviting potential partners and contributors for this initiative to contact us. We're particularly interested in:

• Leadership experts willing to offer advice, training material and possibly time;
• People working with young or emerging leaders at grassroots level to share your perspectives regarding needs and opportunities;
• Corporates willing to partner with us by investing in this project (proper channels and systems would be set up once we have lift-off);
• Anyone who can contribute ideas, suggestions, time, or share your experiences and knowledge about similar projects in which you might have been involved with.

 If you're interested to help make a difference by becoming involved with this initiative, please contact SLI by email () or submit a request by visiting our Contact us page.