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hello I'm Katherine Klein I'm the vice Dean for social impact at Wharton and a
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professor in the management department and delighted to be talking with our guest Fred swaner Fred swaner is a
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Serial entrepreneur and leadership development expert making huge positive social impact in Africa he founded the
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African Leadership Academy the African leadership Network and ALU the African leadership universities and has been
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named a Ted fellow a world economic forum young Global leader one of the top 10 Young powermen in Africa by Forbes
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Magazine and other honors so Fred it's great to have you with us and thank you
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um it's pleasure to be here great so let's start let's start broad you know
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tell us is is Africa a good place for business today I think that Africa is the most
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exciting place for business in the world today um it has uh it offers the second
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highest rate of return for globally in terms of Investments today but more importantly you see I think that
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um uh there are certain long-term trends that are taking place in Africa which um
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provide fantastic opportunities for investors um and Business Leaders to actually um not only have impact uh and
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feel good about investing but actually to really make a lot of money as well at this this is not the the image of we are
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likely to get of Africa on the front page of American News newspapers for example no not at all and I think it's
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also quite different from uh the way for example Chinese investors are seeing Africa oh okay you know and I think the
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way I I um the way I look at it is that the average American um business leader never remembers a time when the USA
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looked like Africa does sure so if you think about um you know it took the the US has been fairly developed for the
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last 100 years right so your parents or your grandparents never remember the time right when this country looked like
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Africa right but if you think about how fast China is developed and where China was 30 years ago for the average Chinese
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business leader going to Africa they look around they're like oh this looks like what China was like 30 years ago
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right so for them they don't think this is a place I come and do charity yes and
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give um to people who I need they think this is a place for me to come and do business right because I actually get to
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do what we did in in China all over again right and I think that this is the the the block that that most investors
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in the US have is that it's just difficult to go there and imagine that what you see could actually be any
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different so so what you're saying is this is a time for investment in Africa
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not charity absolutely because there's no region in the world that has developed through charity you know the
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only thing that drives prosperity and job creation and brings people um out of poverty is
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entrepreneurship it's business that's what creates that you know there's not
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enough government spending there's not enough Charities there's not enough Aid
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to to drive development it has to come from the ground through entrepreneurship and and that's what Africa needs at at
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this point so talk to us about the needs in Africa do and what will it take to build entrepreneurship in Africa and to
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build the the employment in Africa and and what are you trying to do to to move the needle on I believe that for in any
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part of the world for an entrepreneur venture to take off there three things that need to come together
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you need an idea you need the team that can execute the idea and you need some Capital yeah I think that for me is a
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fundamental of any business idea in the US and more developed markets the mix of
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those three things is that you have plenty of people you know thousands of people who are educated top universities
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every year um you know there's a long long huge huge stock of human capital that can execute things there's billions
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of dollars of capital trillions of dollars of capital that to be able to invest in things what is scarce in more
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development markets are the ideas because so much has already been done right you know had 300 years of
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development you go to Africa the mix of those three things is different the ideas are plenty you know
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everywhere you look you pick up a stone there's another idea right and and you
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don't have to be a rocket scientist at all because you just have to look at what are simple goods and services that
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are offered elsewhere right that have not been offered yet in Africa and you just have to almost copy those there's
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no chain of of retail stores oh maybe I should build supermarkets here there's
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no uh system of consumer credit maybe I should be the first to introduce credit cards or other forms of Consumer Finance
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there's there isn't enough education maybe I should build a chain of for-profit schools so it's not complex
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ideas yeah plenty of ideas increasingly actually the capital is available in Africa it's not necessarily US capital
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but there's more and more Capital coming into into Africa what is scarce are the
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people who can execute these ideas and so what I've devoted my time and my real
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passion is in creating those people right developing those people who are going to be the leaders the
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entrepreneurs who are going to not only establish small scale Enterprise but are
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going to establish large scale investable Enterprise that are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and
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that are really going to bring Africa out of poverty so that's my passion right and so 10 years ago you founded
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the African Leadership Academy and this was probably your your first major play so tell us about that and then I want to
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hear about the African leadership universities but what what is African Leadership Academy
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well African Leadership Academy the the the philosophy behind is that if you think about a lot of the world's great
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entrepreneurs and great leaders they started young yeah you think about Richard Branson was 16 when he started
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virgin um Bill Gates was 19 when he started Microsoft Steve Jobs same age Mark Zuckerberg 17 the founders of
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Google were 21 so um this is really very often the the lifeblood of Entrepreneurship it's young people
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people who are not afraid to dream big and who have the energy to really bring tremendous ideas to life so throughout
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Africa these young people exist what hasn't existed in the past is that someone to believe in them and to give
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them a chance because you know I went to business school at Stanford and one of the reasons I was curious about going to
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Stanford is I really wanted to understand what's different about Silicon Valley that creates all these
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you know tremendous entrepreneurs that change the world is there something special about the water that they drink
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there right you know what is really unique and I went there I real you know there's nothing special about the water
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or the air in Silicon Valley the only difference is that venture capitalist investors take a 17-year-old kid with an
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idea seriously right and next thing of Facebook is created so I thought what if we could go around Africa and find the
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same equivalence the African Mark Zuckerberg at 17 the next African Steve Jobs or the Bill Gates or the next um
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you know Nelson Mandela at the age of 17 18 19 and then bring them into a special
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program where you you develop their um their entrepreneurial leadership skills you give them more class education and
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then you also plug them into very powerful Network because I believe that no matter how good your skills are as a
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leader or an entrepreneur if you don't have access to the right mentors people
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can invest in you who can open doors introduce you to your first customer Etc you'll never be able to take your
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potential to the full level so that's where we started and it's a twoe program
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it's a two-year program we identify we get about 3 to 4,000 applicants a year
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from across the continent 48 different countries we select the top 100 they joined this program for two years we
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educate them they get hands on to be clear it's harder to get into ala than into Wharton or Stanford or Harvard or
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Harvard yes yeah we we're admitting about 3% of the applicants so this is really the cream of the crop of Africa
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in terms of but we're selecting them not because of the financial means they have
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right right we're selecting them because of the potential impact they have they
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can have on the continent so many of them at the age of 16 or 17 have started companies they've invented products
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they've LED political movements in their countries and so forth and we say okay
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if you did all this on your own without anyone investing you imagine what we can
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do if we bring you into this network invest in you develop you educate you and then plug you into these networks so
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um they leave their Academy and then go into top universities around the world and then they all have a a contract with
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us that they must return to Africa by the age of 25 and and serve on the C for at least 10 years so this has been
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obviously a tremendously successful and inspiring model um but you've recently
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said Okay that was great but we need to be looking Beyond High School Beyond sending African students out to the
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universities around the world we need to create worldclass universities in Africa
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so tell us more about that vision and how on Earth you and others can pull this off yeah so as you men you know
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it's been incredibly fulfilling seeing the African Leadership Academy come to
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life and over the next 50 so far we have 700 young leaders that are under development and over a 50e time frame
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this is going to create 6,000 leaders that are going to transform Africa um but um a couple of things have been trou
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troubling me one is that we would get 4,000 applications every year and we could only take 100 students so I
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thought you know wow all these people with potential talent that we're leaving
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on the on the streets um and I saw so much hunger thought how do we give access to more people the second thing
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that troubled me is that after students came to the academy we would have to send 80% of them to college in the
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states um or to Europe right and so I thought you know why are we sending all our students outside of Africa why don't
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we have the equivalent of Harvard and Stanford and Warton and Yale and Princeton in Africa right you
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world-class universities that our students can go to um and um so that's what inspired me to start African
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leadership University and the vision we have is to build 25 brand new universities across the continent uh
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each with 10,000 students so this would about 250,000 students at a time and it's over the next 50 years this would
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now allow us to develop 6,000 sorry 3 million leaders so this is a h but you're so where are you in the process
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you've you've you're starting with the first University we're opening the first
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campus um in the next few months um and uh we're starting with about 200 students um and uh we're planning to
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start on the island of macius and then um after that we're looking to open in
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other countries around the continent and um you know this is a it's a big dream
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and so we're not expecting it's going to happen overnight right you know I think
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in terms of decades when I when I look at my projects so because I I really believe that Africa's development is a
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50 to 100 year project and we have to think that long term and put the foundation in place that's actually
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going to develop it once and for all and so you know this is a 20 it's going to
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take us 15 20 25 years to roll out these universities but what matters to us is the quality uh and we're going to take
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our time and do it right um to make sure that we can really use this as an engine
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for driving and Africa's trans what these what will these universities look like I mean we looking at universities
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around the United States and around the world that are hundreds and hundreds of years old you know people will comment
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on universities that we are some of the most traditional institutions and organ some of the oldest organizations in the
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world we don't change easily yes exactly uh so are you asking well you're not
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really asking us to change you're asking for a new model of a university in Africa yes exactly you see I think one
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of the best things about Africa is the fact that we don't have any Legacy there's so many things that we can do um
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where we can actually create not just copy a model that is not perfect but really create a new and improved model
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um and you know one of the things we don't have in Africa are faculty who are
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on tenure who will tell us that we can't do things differently we don't have
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professors and we don't have alumni who are going to say well that's different
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from the way I went to school we don't have donors who are going to put pressure on us you know so that allows
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us to say we have a clean slate let's imagine if you were to build a University from scratch for the 21st
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century because as you mentioned you know most universities in the US have built that especially the best ones 300
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years ago the world has changed tremendously during that time but a lot of what happens at these universities
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had not changed during that time you know so there are many things that we're
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doing um to completely reinvent the university for example um we looked at the length of the degree the typical us
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college to go to one of the top universities today you're spending about $60,000 a year so $240,000 investment
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for four-year degree but when we actually analyze the amount of time that students are spending in class every
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year you find that um students typically get five to six months of vacation every year so today
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you might pay $240,000 to go to an ivy league university and you get 2.3 years of education right that for us is a
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travesty you know and we definitely can't afford to do that in Africa so in our model it's a threeyear degree and
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during those three years you'll spend eight months on campus every year and four months with an employer so you
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graduate with actually more education in the three years than a foure degree and
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with onee work experience under your belt already which also makes you much more attractive to so what is you know
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so hearing a lot obviously about mukes massive online open courses about the the potential for technology to to uh
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revolutionized education uh universities in the United States are you know trying
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to figure figure out this new world and how do we integrate technology do we integrate technology what is the threat
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to us you're not talking about just online education no you see I you know as has been shown with there was a lot
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of excitements that came out about muks right um but what became clear is that that's not the it's not a silver bullet
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solution because the completion rates are very low typically less than 10% of people who start Mooks actually finish
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right so um and from from the beginning you know we've never thought that that
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was that was the answer because the best learning is social you still need human
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intervention and so forth so what we're doing with our universities um that these are fully residential campuses
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right there's no option to be a day student um and what we're doing is we
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are leveraging the power of muks and other Technologies to actually say you know let's break the Monopoly on
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knowledge that any given University might have so um you know today if you go to a university they'll forc you to
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take all the content the curriculum from that University whether it's good or bad
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and we're saying you know what let's actually look around the world and curate the world's best curriculum let's
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pick the best from this University and that University and that University and bring it together in one place let's
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pick the best from industry let's look at what other research is being done bring it together in one place using
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technology and then let's also leverage the the the power of pure learning right
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because what we don't have in Africa are professors with phds what we do have are
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lots of brilliant students right so let's use that abundant resource and so students will learn by
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themselves using all this this this free knowledge that's out there they learn
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from each other and teach each other and Studies have shown that when you have to
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teach something someone else you learn it much better and then finally we will still have faculty on the ground but the
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faculty are um one of three types of people they recent college graduates they mid-career professionals or their
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retired Executives and we're selecting them not because they're good at research but because they're really good
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at teaching and they're good at and they're passionate about teaching which
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is one of the things I think that's broken with the university model as well
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they're fantastic for producing research and knowledge for publication but it's
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not always the best experience for undergraduates right because many professors this could be a very
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significant disruptive innovation that many professors do not enjoy teaching and they haven't been hired because
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they're good at teaching they've been hir and are rewarded for their research
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so we're saying let's decouple the two get the world's best research from
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different places and find the world's best teachers and train them to to be teachers and then also um support these
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these faculty with with a very sophisticated analytical platform that allows them to understand what the
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students are learning and what they're struggling with so that they can use it
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to TA their tailor their lessons better and also to make sure that no student gets left behind because today sometimes
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the professor only knows you're struggling at the end of term when they turn in the paper and you get a D in
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this model because of the analytics you can pick up with a student struggling by
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Wednesday of week and call them into your office and so that way no one can hide right so what's been the response
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so far to your to this this model and this this idea that you have well the response in Africa has been tremendous I
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mean the the need is so great right um in Africa graduates about 45 million students a year from high schools and
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the universities can only absorb 4.5 million of them wow so to catch up you know the tertiary enrollment rate in
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Africa which is the percentage of students who are of tertiary going age that are actually enrolled m m in t
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institutions is 8% wow in uh India it's 18% in the west it's about 70% so just
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to catch up to India's level not even to try to make it to the West we would need
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to build we've calculated because of the rate at which Africa's population is
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growing it's the fastest rate in the world and the Youth of our population we
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would need to build 135 universities the size of Harvard every single year for the next 15 years just to catch up to
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India and so so there's demand for what you have to off tremendous demand and so
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we've you know we've opened our um applications for the first class and within 60 days we had 5,000 applications
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uh for just 200 slots W so um you know the reception from the students has been tremendous and you'll have so you know
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you have an amazing population of students to work with to pick from exactly yeah and you and and part of the
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training is a lot of internship experience for these students as well so the the goal is that they are getting
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great education partly through peers and they're getting trained for for business
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well they're TR getting trained for of not just for business because I hope that half of them will come
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entrepreneurs on their own right so um but what we're trying to do with the internships is to give them skills right
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because we believe that and this another thing that I think the university model
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is broken many universities Focus only on giving you Theory and content and and and hope that the skills that employers
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want rubs off you by accident and we're saying actually the real thing that you should
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be getting out of University are skills and um make it much more explicit about that mhm um because you know the
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world is changing so fast the actual knowledge becomes obsolete right so you know if you started doing uh marketing
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seven years ago true You' be talking about marketing on billboards and TV and
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radio by time you graduate the world has changed to digital marketing right right
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you started doing computer science six years ago you've been learning about how
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to code for the computer a PC a laptop by the time you graduate the world has moved to Mobile so you want to teach
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people how to think right teach people how to think critically how to communicate how to collaborate how to
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lead yourself how to lead others those are the skills that will endure with you as the world changes and so that's what
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we we we embedd in them during their formal time on campus and then every year as I mentioned you're spending four
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months with an employer actually practicing those skills and learning about the industry and by the time you
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graduate after three years you already you have these skills you have this work experience and so there should be no
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reason why an employer isn't clamoring to hire you or that you aren't equipped
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yourself to start your own business which I think we need to do a lot of in Africa because then that's why
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entrepreneurship training is such a key part of our so so to to wrap up we've
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I've heard you speak about entrepreneurship and and the the opportunities for entrepreneurship and
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the need for entrepreneurship in Africa and the need to deliver the kinds of products that you see in the United
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States and Elsewhere for much at a much know cheaper price much lower price yeah
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and um so this is really what you're trying to do with ALU yeah yeah exactly
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I mean I think that the business models you can't go to afca with the same business model there's a lot of money to
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be made in Africa there's a lot of impact you can have in Africa but you can't go there with just the same
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business model elsewhere you need to think completely radically and and redesign them the model and say you know
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there are consumers there who have needs they have uh some you know financial means how do you design a solution to um
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serve that and very often involves leveraging technology like what we're doing with the African leadership
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University but similarly entrepreneurs need to think about how do I do this to provide lowcost housing right how do I
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do this to provide lowcost healthare how do I do this to provide low lowcost you
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know consumer goods there's so many needs that you know we have a billion consumers that's growing at the fastest
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rate in the world they're going to be a population of two billion by you know in
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in in the next 30 Years so that is a massive massive market right uh and uh you know we have Africans are having
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fewer and fewer children therefore the dependency ratio is going down so Africans uh have more money to spend
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right and so there's a tremendous opportunity I think that this is really um where especially with aging
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population in the west where there's increasing demands on Pension funds and
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so forth to get returns one of the places that's going to solve this is investing in Africa
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yeah great thank you so much for being with us is really inspiring and I mean really so exciting so thank you so much
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thank you for having me [Music]