Establishing a UCT Leadership Academy directly responds to Vision 2030 of the University of Cape Town (UCT). An important aspect of unleashing human potential to create a fair and just society is the intentional development of student leaders. Although many outstanding leadership development initiatives exist across the university environment, the Division of Student Affairs (DSA) believes there is an opportunity to integrate these streams into an institutional system that could optimise student leadership development at UCT and across Africa. This systemic integration will serve as a baseline for making a global contribution. To this end, the DSA started a conversation with key stakeholders to establish a UCT Leadership Academy (UCT-LEAD). 

This conversation was initiated during the DSA strategic planning session from 9 to 11 November 2021. During this strategic planning session, the DSA identified three key strategic areas, namely: (1) grow a culture of ethical self-organisation and care; (2) create communities of co-creation and care; and (3) develop a system of integrated, responsive and agile support. Establishing a leadership academy was identified as a specific objective to advance the second key strategic area mentioned above: creating communities of co-creation and care. This objective (i.e., establishing a leadership academy) was further explored with a broader group of stakeholders during a conversation on 21 and 22 April 2022. 

Then, in October 2022, UCT-LEAD invited KJB and other internal leadership programmes to present the KJB Leadership Programme as inspiration for the UCT-LEAD academy model.  Programme Manager, Belisa Rodrigues, explained the history of the KJB Programme, its founding values and its programme model. It was noteworthy that after the presentation, the Global Citizenship Programme commented that the KJB Scholars who take the GC courses, as part of their elective requirements of the KJB Programme, are the most engaged students in their classes and a pleasure to work with. 

As a surprise, Ms Rodrigues invited one of the KJB special scholarship holders to share their thoughts on leadership inspired by the most recent KJB Leadership Bootcamp with the group. The KJB Bootcamp covered afro-centric leadership concepts, focused on our collective humanity, explored intergenerational leadership and the need for pause/rest in the leadership journey. Inspired by what they learned, scholars developed a concept of Sankofa Leadership to inspire the next generation of peers across the university. It is unclear what this could look like, but it was used as a provocation at the UCT-LEAD Colloquium and was very well received.