Club of Emerging Leaders

History of CELA

"When spiders unite, they can tie up a lion" Old Ethiopian proverb.

We spoke of our experiences and other first generation Africans spoke on the experiences of their parents.  Frustration was expressed on the following levels: the quality and effectiveness of our current African leaders; the lack of institutions to enforce the law and protect basic human rights; the scale at which corruption super ceded the rule of law; the lack of real role models or knowing who they were.  A major issue also raised was that we seriously had no information—apart from what we saw or read in the western media, which is almost always negative—on the current situation of people on the African soil. 

We realized we thought we knew what was going on, we thought we had an agenda, and we thought we knew how to help 0... but how could we … ? We were like that one broomstick that one could easily snap, and many before us had already suffered that fate.

As the discussion went on it became apparent that not only were we feeling disillusioned by outside solutions to Africa’s problems, we were also contributing to them.  We needed a new strategy, a new way to “help” without imposing our ideas on our people in Africa.

To foster communication the founder proposed to establish a website, monthly newsletters and biennial conferences on the continent.  The founder also proposed to start working with the youth at universities in Africa, as they were in a more condensed environment and easier to find. 

CELA aims to gather more and more spiders to its alliance, and with that our coalition, the new generation of achievers for Africa, grows stronger—as according to the old Ethiopian proverb.