The year 2015 marks a new moment at the African Leadership Centre in Nairobi. It is the year the Centre inaugurates its second strategic planning period which will run to 2019. The new strategic plan focuses on consolidating the strategic and operational activities at the Centre. It comes hot the heels of the appointment of Ms. Funmi Vogt as Director of Operations at the ALC with the mandate to streamline and upscale operations of the Centre. It is also within this strategic plan period that the Centre will commence a review of the governance system in order to include and engage in a more systematic way the ALC Alumni.
At 89 members of the ALC Alumni network, the Centre has created a huge resource both from its Fellowship programmes. This resources is spread across the continent and beyond with roughly 10 at various stages of undertaking their Ph.D. studies and many others engaged in further studies or working within specific policy environments in and outside the continent. Not only does the ALC boast of its alumni at the African Union and ECOWAS, one former Woman Fellow, Ms. Abratha Doe, was recently appointed by Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and approved by the Senate as Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What is remarkable about this appointment is that Ms. Doe has committed to using the knowledge gained at the ALC in her work and to constantly sound out the Centre as a reference point for a different approach to leadership.
The launch of the ALC newsletter feeds directly into a new dispensation in which branding and communication will help anchor the Centre as a key player in the peace and security terrain in Africa. The newsletter will also serve the objective of rapidly updating partners and members of the ALC family of the work of the Centre. In addition to providing such information, we also will use the newsletter to publish brief but extremely illuminating pieces on current issues on the continent. In this particular issue, we carry brief analyses by staff, Fellows and alumnus on security in Central African region, Ebola and its security implication in West Africa and labour unrest in South Africa.
Finally, as we were finalising this inaugural issue of the newsletter, news came through that the ALC Founding Director, Dr. ‘Funmi Olonisakin has been appointed by the UN Secretary General to the Advisory Group of Experts reviewing the UN Peacebuilding Architecture. There is no better endorsement the ALC would expect than to have its own engaged in such a high level exercise. Let me use the occasion of this inaugural ALC newsletter to congratulate Dr. Olonisakin and wish her the very best in this engaging exercise. It is therefore my pleasure to invite you to enjoy the newsletter and look forward receiving your feedback regarding our work.
Thank you.
Dr. Godwin R. Murunga
Director, ALC.
