THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW MODEL OF LEADERSHIP IN AFRICA – The story of Patrick Awuah by Adam Abubakar

 

In the year 1985, Ghana was a country under military rule, the economy has been crippled and markets have collapsed. During that time, a teenager by the name Patrick Awuah applied to Swarthmore college for a scholarship. He was fortunate his application was accepted and granted a near full scholarship to major in Economics and Engineering, requiring him to pay just $400. Due to the economic situation and condition of his family, Patrick couldn’t afford to pay, which prompted the U.S embassy to initially reject his application for a Visa.

   However, Swarthmore College settled Patrick Awuah’s new challenge by changing his near full scholarship to full scholarship. At Swarthmore College, Patrick scored high marks in his economics classes for his understanding of basic economics. Speaking at TED where he spoke about “Educating Africa’s future entrepreneurs” in June 2007 at Arusha Tanzania. Patrick Awuah narrates the way learning at Swarthmore College differs entirely from learning in Ghana.“The faculty there didn’t want us to memorize everything and repeat back to them as was used back in Ghana. They wanted us to be analytical. They wanted us to be concerned about social issues.” But Patrick learned something more profound than that, which is that the leaders, the managers of Ghana’s economy where making breathtakingly bad decisions that had brought Ghana’s economy to the brink of collapse.

   After graduating from Swarthmore, Patrick got a job at Microsoft Corporation and was working with Bill Gates and Rebecca, a Software testing Engineer that later became his wife. Patrick didn’t really fully understand what would have happen to him at Swarthmore College until he started working at Microsoft. “I was part of this team. This thinking, learning team whose job was to design and implement new software that created value in the world. It was brilliant to be part of this team and I realized just what had happened to me at Swarthmore, this transformation. The ability to confront complex problems and to design solutions to those problems. The ability to create is the most empowering thing that can happen to an individual, and I was part of that” he said.

   Patrick Awuah realized that Africa’s greatest challenge is that of leadership and when leaders fail, a nation literally suffers. It was clear that Africa was going in the wrong direction and he decided to get engaged. In 1998, he left Microsoft Corporation and enrolled at Berkeley’s Haas school of Business. In the same year, he and his friends travelled to Ghana to complete a feasibility study of creating a private University in Ghana and wrote Ashesi’s Business plan as his MBA thesis.

In 2001, Patrick returned to Ghana, leaving his job at Microsoft where he and Rebecca earned Millions to set up Ashesi University which was co-founded with Nina Marini in Accra to educate young Africans. The school opened in 2002 with 30 students and half of the students were on financial aid.

  

Currently, Ashesi offers four-year bachelor's degrees in business administration, computer science and management information systems. Seniors are required to complete a community service project before graduating—and many graduate with job offers from corporate Ghana and government ministries.

Teens Life Coaching Lesson number three. Positive role models and Negative role models

Leonard Mudhangu

   The society that we are living in these modern days is now very dangerous especially in our teens’ eyes. If they do not observe well their life future can be destroyed. In these modern days the society has shifted its mindset from following positive role models to negative role models. Let’s just take a quick look at what exactly are these negative role models and positive role models.

Positive Role Models:

    These are in general the people that influence the behaviour of the society in a positive way and people want to copy what they do. What they do is to build people's lives in a way that benefits everyone who is in that society. Good examples are musicians, their message will be affecting the community in a positive way. These people can be found in any sector business, arts or sports. In football we got people like David Beckam, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi among others. The world all over these people have shaped the lives of our teenagers in the society to the extent that some of them want to be like them one day in their soccer careers. Some wear football jerseys printed the name of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. This is what we call influencing the society in a positive way. They inspire, motivate and shape the lives of our teenagers in a positive way.

Negative Role Models:
   The trend of nowadays is that the society now follows this group called negative role models. They affect and influence the community in a destructive way. The world all over we got good examples of these people of which for legal issues l cannot mention some names. We have football players sometimes who are talented but not disciplined and most of the time they are always doing negative things and teenagers tend to copy these bad behaviours thinking that it is good. We got musicians all over who sometimes are found doing drug abuse and our teenagers tend to copy these behaviours.

  Photo credit: www.123rf.com

 These models influence the community in a destructive way killing the future of our teens. We will later discover our teens being caught in drug abuse, alcohol abuse and all sorts of illegal crimes because they will be imitating the behaviours of these negative role models. Many at times these people they have got huge crowds of followers mostly teenagers.

  In conclusion, teenagers need to be taught to be able to differentiate good and bad behaviours .They must be able to differentiate between negative role models and positive role models. Let’s help our teenagers to go the top and be great leaders of tomorrow. I am one of those people that believe building Africa we must start by shaping the lives of our youths and teenagers.

Leonard Mudhangu is a Certified Life Coach /Author/Personal development
Speaker who have spoken on various local youths and teens seminars. He
is based in Zimbabwe, Harare. He has coached a lot of youths who are
doing well in various sectors.
He can be contacted on his email:chifambamudhangu@gmail.com
Facebook: Leonard Mudhangu
twitter : chifambamudhang
cell number:+263 771 978 270