In the mid 1950s, Chinua Achebe, then a mid level employee of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS), began work on an epic and in many ways unprecedented novel, the story of several generations of Nigerian men. The idea for the work, which would later be condensed into the single, sharply propulsive narrative of the noble though hubristic Okonkwo, came to Achebe while still enrolled at the University of Ibadan. Then pursuing a degree in English literature as part of that school’s first class of students, Achebe had been chosen for admission to the new institution based on the exceptional leadership qualities he had exhibited as a young man. Ibadan would become a hub of West African intellectual life after independence, but was established to “form” or produce the rising generation of Nigerian leaders. Under late British rule, these emerging local “leaders” were meant to serve largely as collaborators under the subordinated rule of a colony.
With a curriculum based heavily on the English canon – from Shakespeare to Milton to Conrad– Achebe, though an exceptionally able student, began to find himself troubled by many of his readings and the assignments he was obliged to produce on them. With scant mention of African histories or cultural forms, and with what few representations of Africans he encountered of a largely regressive nature – savages such as Caliban at best – the pre-independence image of Africa and its peoples that the young Achebe encountered in his courses insulted both his pride as an African and his emerging artistic vision. Where, he wondered, were the African protagonists? Why was he being educated exclusively through the stories of precisely those who had subordinated the communities of which he was part? Was there any reason that the novel as a form could not articulate the story of a Nigerian, or articulate a vision of Africa’s future? On the eve of Africa’s independence, Achebe realized that emerging nations such as Nigeria would need written versions of its own stories and new stories to educate its coming citizens.
Even from that young age, Achebe’s understanding of art was predicated on a progressive relationship to society, and he believed even then that the role of an author was akin to that of the teacher: to instruct and develop the moral character and worldly knowledge of emerging publics. At that startlingly young age, though, Achebe understood a key difference between teachers and writers: while teachers were responsible for educating their students through a variety of means – from lectures, to tests, to recitation periods – the exclusive tool available to the literary author was storytelling. What Achebe believed while beginning the novel – a belief that would become a hallmark of his critical writings and his literary practice – was that sharp storytelling combined with innovative ideas carries the potential to change the world.
Several years later and after several administrative hiccups (the sole manuscript at one point losing a year in the unhurried hands of a London- based typing service) the streamlined story of Okonkwo become Things Fall Apart. Then and now the novel represents an innovation based on an adaptation of existing tradition, in this case the novel. Published in 1958, the novel would eventually sell over eight million copies worldwide, and make Achebe a lion of global literary culture. Not only did the success of Achebe’s work facilitate the establishing of the institutions most responsible for the development of African writing in English – publishing houses and distribution networks – but it also serves as a perennial and indigenous cornerstone of a whole new kind of literature. It remains the first text in most if not all African studies curricula.
I was strongly reminded of the history of this novel’s birth as I listened to Fred Swaniker describe his experiences developing the African Leadership Academy during his recent visit to Acumen’s New York offices. A graduate of both Macalester College and Stanford Business School, Fred first had the idea for the ALA while working as a consultant at McKinsey’s Nigerian office, just prior to beginning his graduate work at Stanford.
Astonished to find so many wealthy Nigerians sending their children to expensive foreign boarding schools, many of them costing upwards of $40,000, Swaniker wondered why it was that no viable alternative existed anywhere on the African continent. As he recently recalled for Junior Kanu of Solving Africa , Swaniker began asking himself,
Why are we spending so much money to educate kids outside of Africa? Why don’t we have a school on par with the best in the world right here? It would be a cheaper alternative… [and because]… these kids were leaving at such an early age, they would never come back to Africa. And if they came back, how useful would they be to the continent?
In addition to this “lack,” there were two other conditions facing the continent that convinced Fred that an elite school based in Africa was not only a good but also a necessary idea. The first reason is the so-called “brain-drain,” alluded to in the quote above. Throughout the continent, the smartest, best- educated African youth have been fleeing to Europe and the United States in startling numbers, often pursuing lucrative careers thought to be unavailable in Africa. This kind of corporate diaspora, a path that Fred himself initially followed to McKinsey, often winds up a self-perpetuating cycle, with new African businesses and firms being built outside the continent, with foreign capital and foreign profits.
Fred also identified early on the centrality of leadership in both those African nations that were flourishing and those that were locked in alternating cycles of kleptocracy and dependence on foreign aid. In one case, exceptional leadership had worked to build central institutions, self-perpetuating infrastructure, and sustainable industry, in the other corrupt, factionalizing rule had lined the pockets of small elites while impinging the development of nations. A continent rich in resources and industriousness, leadership and its follies have been at the heart of persistent problems facing Africa. As Fred puts it, again in the interview from earlier this year:
The countries I’d lived in that I saw things were working, like Botswana, you could see that it was the leadership at the root cause of it. And no place shows you the impact of leadership in Africa [more] than Nigeria. People think what we need in Africa is resources, it’s not resources, the world keeps giving us more aid, that’s not what’s going to change Africa, we have all the resources we need… They have all these natural resources… time and time again, we find that our leaders have held us back.
Like Chinua Achebe and Fred Swaniker, leaders can also drive nations forward, helping them reach their potential. It is this brand of leadership that Acumen Fund seeks in its Fellows, and why Swaniker was an ideal speaker to include in their training. With funding from family, friends, Stanford classmates, and others, by the time he was a year out of school, much of the initial work had been realized. Last year, with the arrival of their first class of students, the two-year ALA began educating the future leaders of Africa. Its curriculum based on the best practices of global entrepreneurship yet grounded in the history of Africa, and its wildly variegated cultures, ALA is teaching its exceptional pupils how to be both global and continental leaders and how to be historically-conscious Africans. Needless to say, holding a central place in the African Studies section of its three-pronged curriculum (the other two being leadership and entrepreneurship) is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
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