The ALU School of Business is pioneering a fresh approach to business education, tailored to the needs of a rising Africa. Our vision is to serve as a catalyst for prosperity in Africa by developing African business leaders and entrepreneurs to help make this century The African Century.

Through innovative teaching methods and learning in real-time, we combine a world-class business education and signature V^3 leadership training with the practical experience of doing business in Africa. Our aim? To help you develop the skills and network to succeed as a pan-African business leader.

The ALU School of Business (ALUSB) is a part of African Leadership University (ALU), which is accredited by the Higher Education Council of Rwanda and is located in the heart of the Rwandan capital Kigali, at Kigali Heights. The ALUSB MBA degree is awarded by African Leadership University.

ALUSB launched its first MBA class in 2016 and looks forward to graduating its first class in 2018.

Vision

Welcome Letter from our Founder

This is Africa’s century, but Africa needs us to achieve its full potential. The private sector will play a key role: maximising current opportunities and unearthing new areas of growth. The ALU School of Business is preparing the global leaders needed to help create this change.

Africa has been through various generations of leadership: the independence era, the era of political instability, and the current era of (relative) political stability. Africa’s next era must be one of economic growth and poverty alleviation in order to truly unleash Africa’s potential. One of our key tasks this century as African changemakers will be creating one billion jobs. This is essential as Africa’s population grows to have the largest proportion of working age people in the world. These jobs will not come from government alone, they will need to come from the private sector and from entrepreneurship.

We need to rapidly develop great leaders for the private sector, and develop the skills of the public sector to create an enabling environment for business, economic growth and true development. This challenge is what inspired me to start ALUSB we have an important mission to achieve for the continent, and we all must play our part.

Having gone to Stanford for my MBA, I was able to see firsthand the impact of a worldclass business school education. At Stanford I developed excellent global networks and learned a great deal about business. However, beyond the fact that this education is out of reach for most people (costing roughly $200K), I found that three things were missing:

1. There was no deliberate focus on leadership
2. The excellent network I gained was not African
3. The actual coursework and learning was not relevant to an African context which is where I knew my life’s work was going to be.

In founding ALUSB we have taken these factors into account and created something new and different. It is the only business school in the world that, from inception, is a pan-African business school. Business in Africa is all about relationships; ALUSB will give you a chance to build the powerful pan- African network you need to be successful. We have deliberately focused on research, case studies, and learning from an ‘all-star’ cast of African executives to give you relevant, real stories of doing business in Africa, taking into account its unique challenges and opportunities. Finally, the core of ALUSB is a focus on leadership: leadership is the key factor that you will continue to need as you grow and develop your career. We are taking decades of leadership experience and applying it to our teaching at ALUSB.

At ALUSB, we believe that you never stop learning. Business leaders need to keep reeducating themselves in order to remain relevant and on top of their game, which is why in addition to our flagship MBA, ALUSB will offer short executive progammes, multiweek ‘advanced management programmes’, and customised programmes for seasoned business leaders.

Join us in this mission. This is Africa’s century, but only if we make it so.

Our Leadership