What type of leader is Fred Swaniker? Discuss the pros and cons of that leadership approach, contrasting it with other leadership styles, with respect to ALU’s organisational context and required strategic changes.

Creating Learning Institutions of the Future
In August 2019, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the African Leadership University (ALU), Fred Swaniker, and co-founder and former chief operating officer (COO), Khurram Masood, considered how to ensure the sustainability of ALU and its vision: to develop three million high-calibre,
ethical leaders in Africa by 2035. ALU’s innovative business model aimed at solving Africa’s challenges by instilling good leadership values and an entrepreneurial mindset in its students. Swaniker and Masood had already changed ALU’s operational strategy to scale much faster by registering micro-campuses instead of universities in African countries as a scaling measure and to avoid stringent regulatory requirements. But would that be enough to uphold ALU’s vision for 2035?

Challenges Facing Higher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
A number of researchers, among them, director of research and academic planning at the Association of African Universities (AAU) Prof. Jonathan Chuks Mba found that higher education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was under-developed and had been a low priority for governments for the past two
decades. What affected the performance of African higher education, among other factors, was years of slow economic growth from the late 1970s and into the 1980s that had led to a shortage of employment opportunities for graduates and the subsequent brain drain in search of employment, training and research opportunities abroad, Mba said.