Fred Swaniker

Frederick Kenneth Swaniker
Born1976 (age 47–48)
Ghana
NationalityGhanaian
Alma materMacalester College
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Occupations
  • Entrepreneur
  • educator
Known forCo-founder of African Leadership Academy, African Leadership University, Sand Technologies
WebsiteALX Africa

Fred Swaniker (born 1976) is a Ghanaian serial entrepreneur and leadership development expert on a mission to help the world's most extraordinary talent fulfil its potential. Swaniker recognized the importance of leadership and education while serving as the headmaster of a secondary school founded by his mother at the age of 17, and believed that the missing ingredient needed to transform Africa was good leadership. To solve that problem, he started the African Leadership Group – an ecosystem of organizations that are catalyzing a new era of ethical, entrepreneurial African leaders.

Over the past 16 years, he has founded and led the pre-university African Leadership Academy based in South Africa, the African Leadership University with campuses in Mauritius and Rwanda, the African Leadership Network, ALX (a next-generation leadership development platform) and The Room (a global community of top talent). Collectively, these endeavours aim to transform Africa by developing 3 million African leaders by 2035. He also recently announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power The Room's Intelligence Platform and expand ALG's reach to on-board millions of talented individuals in Africa, Asia, Latin America, North America, and Europe and match them with career opportunities.

In 2019, Time magazine recognized him as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" and Fast Company included African Leadership Group among the 50 most innovative companies[3] in the world.