Josh Adler, Chief Programs Officer at the African Leadership Academy, is currently pursuing a PhD at the Allan Gray Centre for Africa Entrepreneurship. He wants to focus on improving the practice of youth entrepreneur support as it is more than a field of study to him – it’s his life’s work.
After graduating with a degree in computer science and computational maths in the 1990s, Josh Adler and his business partner started their own company that helped magazines bring their content online at a time when the internet was still a budding, unfamiliar piece of territory to many. This evolved into a reputable software firm that was sold a decade later to a listed telecoms group in South Africa.
“It’s critical to improve the help our ecosystem offers younger entrepreneurs who are brave enough to start,” he continues, “They are surprisingly good at creating jobs for other young people – they hire their friends!”
In 2012, he joined African Leadership Academy (ALA), designing and implementing programs to support young leaders to pursue a similar path – starting companies at an early age and providing guidance to them through the challenges that young entrepreneurs face. This work is a continuation of, and very much informed by, Josh’s own experience.
His PhD thesis reflects that. It is titled: “Improving the effectiveness of support, training and funding for recent university graduate entrepreneurs in Africa”. He hopes his academic work will produce a framework that helps organisations supporting younger entrepreneurs improve their approaches, resulting in stronger businesses and job creation.
As for the study experience itself: it’s giving Josh the chance to reflect on and appreciate his work over the last decade, and to analyse the impact of the evolutionary decisions he and his colleagues have made within the entrepreneurship programmes at ALA. In particular, it will create an opportunity to understand and share why tactics like offering small amounts of grant money – conditional on a young entrepreneur proving that they’ve implemented what they’ve learned – has been so effective.
“We’ve figured out a few things about this age group,” says Josh, “Workbooks are better than text textbooks, for example. Conditional micro granting rather than creative forms of equity or debt also appears to best accelerate improvement of the underlying business.”
African Leadership Academy now has over two thousand graduates from its programmes over the years. Many have become career entrepreneurs, real heroes who have never depended on anyone else for a livelihood, Josh says. One is Andrew Mupuya who became referred to as “The paper bag king of Kampala”. At 16, Andrew started, by hand, a paper bag manufacturing business. At 19, he won a grant and support from Anzisha, ALA’s flagship entrepreneur programme, and slowly grew his business through hiring and automation. He has now trained over 1000 people in paper bag manufacturing.
Other young entrepreneurs that the African Leadership Academy has influenced are Souadou Fall of Senegal, and Godiragetse Mogajane of South Africa. Souadou recycles tyres and turns them into bricks and floor mats and employs over 100 people. Godiragetse started Goodie Tutors when he was 18, and in 2021 started Delivery Ka Speed, a delivery service that operates in overlooked areas.
The ethos and values of African Leadership Academy, and the Allan Gray Centre for Africa Entrepreneurship (AGCAE) itself, both reaffirm Josh’s principle philosophy about entrepreneurship: “Entrepreneurship is ultimately an exercise in leadership over and above skills in business practice. I chose AGCAE because this is how they view it, too.”
Josh also commends AGCAE’s aspiration toward a community of African researchers building a large evidence base on the challenges that African entrepreneurs face. “Discovering how much has already been done in the field is humbling, validating, and overall – just exciting.”
