PROGRAMME OVERVIEW

The ALADI Leadership Fellowship is a transformative leadership journey for senior executives, founders, and policymakers seeking to move beyond personal success toward meaningful, lasting impact. Anchored in African intellectual frameworks and traditions, and aligned with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, the Fellowship reframes leadership as an ethical, relational, and institution-building practice, not a credential or a title.

Through ten integrated modules, participants critically examine the dominant leadership canon, recover African philosophical foundations such as Ubuntu, Ujamaa, Harambee, Teranga, and Sankofa, and translate these traditions into rigorous leadership practice. The journey blends moral philosophy with operational excellence, equipping leaders to navigate power responsibly, build institutions that outlast them, lead across difference, and shape the culture and norms of the organisations and societies they serve.

More than a course, the Fellowship is a community of practice, a space for senior leaders to interrogate their own leadership story, develop a personal ethical framework, and make concrete commitments to legacy, stewardship, and intergenerational responsibility.

WHY IT MATTERS FOR ORGANISATIONS

For organisations investing in their senior bench, the Fellowship delivers more than leadership development. It builds shared language and ethical scaffolding across executive teams, sharpens institution-building capability at the level where it actually matters, and produces leaders who can manage complexity, navigate power, and steward culture, not just hit targets. It is designed for organisations serious about leadership as a long-term institutional asset.

CURRICULUM PILLARS (10 MODULES)

  • Reframing Leadership: Africa as source, not problem.
  • Leadership as ethical responsibility and moral courage.
  • Power, stewardship, and accountability.
  • Institutions and the leader as institution-builder.
  • Ubuntu, relational leadership, and collective accountability.
  • Self-leadership, agency, and the inner work of leading.
  • Competence, excellence, and execution.
  • Leadership across gender, generation, class, and difference.
  • Legacy, norms, and intergenerational responsibility.
  • Integration: from learning to leadership practice.

Total contact time across the full curriculum: approximately 50 sessions of 90–120 minutes each, equivalent to roughly 83 hours or 10 full working days of programmed content.

DELIVERY OPTIONS

The Fellowship is offered in four formats, each designed for a different stage of leadership investment and a different organisational need. Programmes can be delivered as open cohorts or as bespoke private cohorts for a single organisation or sector.

12-Week Fellowship  —  The flagship programme 

The complete programme. All ten modules delivered over twelve weeks through a blended structure of in-person residencies and virtual cohort sessions, with coaching, peer learning, applied projects, a Leadership Autobiography, a personal Ethical Framework, and an Accountability Compact.

Indicative structure:

  • Weeks 1–2 (Modules 1–2) — Virtual orientation followed by a 3–4 day opening residency in Elementaita.
  • Weeks 3–6 (Modules 3–5) — Virtual cohort sessions, 1–2 per week.
  • Week 7 — Midpoint pause / light week. Optional informal cohort gathering in Nairobi.
  • Weeks 8–10 (Modules 6–8) — Virtual cohort sessions, 1–2 per week.
  • Weeks 11–12 (Modules 9–10) — 4–5 day closing residency in Elementaita.

Best for: organisations and individuals making a serious investment in long-arc leadership transformation, where the full ethical, relational, and institutional journey is the point.

1-Week Intensive  —  the executive reset

Five full working days, delivered fully in residence at Elementaita, with pre-reading and a short virtual orientation in advance. Covers approximately 75–80% of the curriculum, structured around a daily rhythm of morning anchor sessions, deep applied work in the afternoons, and evening reflection circles.

In this condensed format, the Leadership Autobiography, Personal Ethical Framework, and Legacy Design components are not delivered in full; these are best held within the 12-week or extended formats. Follow-up master classes and cohort check-ins can be added to extend impact.

Best for: homogeneous groups: senior or mid-level leadership teams from a single organisation, sector cohorts, or executive teams seeking a concentrated leadership reset within a tight time window.

3-Day Leadership Summit  —  A high-level convening for senior leaders

A premium retreat-style convening designed specifically for senior leaders, C-suite executives, founders, board members, and policymakers. Rather than delivering the modules, the Summit is built around a small set of provocative framing questions drawn from the Fellowship’s most catalytic ideas.

Sample framing questions:

  • What would leadership look like if it drew unapologetically from African traditions?
  • What does power require of you and what does it cost?
  • What does it mean to lead excellently in contexts designed to reward mediocrity?
  • What is your leadership commitment, and how will you remain accountable?

Given the seniority of the audience, the Summit deliberately incorporates retreat-style elements: executive coaching sessions, breathwork and stretching, art and reflection activities, professional headshots, and optional sessions with a stylist or image consultant. The intention is restorative as well as catalytic, a space for leaders who rarely get one.

Best for: executive teams, boards, senior cohorts, and convenings where the goal is high-level reflection, peer challenge, and personal renewal rather than full curriculum delivery.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Senior executives, seasoned leaders, founders, policymakers, board members, and high-level professionals across the public, private, and civil society sectors who are transitioning into legacy, impact, and systems leadership roles in Africa and beyond.

Ideal For B2B Partners

  • Corporates investing in C-suite, executive committee, or senior leadership pipelines.
  • Foundations and development organisations building leadership capacity across grantee networks.
  • Government and public sector institutions developing senior policymakers and reform leaders.
  • Family offices, founder-led businesses, and boards seeking succession-ready leadership.
  • Sector and industry bodies convening their senior membership around leadership questions.