PMIEF boosts entrepreneurial training through African Leadership Academy

The African Leadership Academy (ALA) has received a multi-million rand grant from the PMI Educational Foundation (PMIEF). The grant expands on PMIEF’s current partnership with the ALA, which seeks to introduce students to project management through the Build-in-a-Box curriculum. The curriculum is a portable toolkit that provides content and teaching materials that allow ALA student facilitators to run professional entrepreneurial leadership camps in their home countries.

The curriculum is based on BUILD, a unique framework for teaching youth entrepreneurship to fight unemployment and engage them to lead solutions to local problems. ALA works with its students to find partner organisations that they can work with to run a successful and impactful camp in their respective countries. Students enrolled in ALA’s flagship program have led and facilitated over 60 build-in-box camps for over 2000 of their peers in cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Harare, Bamenda, Kinshasa, and Port Elizabeth.

Executive Director, PMIEF, Dr. Ashley Forsyth, said: “By partnering with ALA, we have equipped over 1,700 emerging African leaders with project management skills in the recent year and are excited about continuing our relationship. Through ALA, we will work to transform Africa by developing a powerful network of young leaders who will work together to address the continent’s greatest challenges, achieve extraordinary social impact and accelerate the continent’s growth trajectory.”

Quoting Henry Ford, MD of PMI Sub Saharan Africa, George Asamani says, “A country’s competitiveness starts not on the factory floor or the engineering lab. It starts in the classroom. Passion, attitude, and character are one side of the enterprise coin, and having a program that sharpens the leadership and project management skills required to become entrepreneurs definitely helps and yields better results. The program is well-integrated with the industry, and PMI South Africa Chapter volunteers often provide the required support and participate with students in their projects and serve as mentors.”