Saturday morning at 8am on WCLK's The Local Take, we continued our series of interviews with the 2019 Clark Atlanta University School of Business Young African Leadership Initiative - Mandela Fellows. This highly competitive program, which began under the Obama Administration in 2009 brings the brightest young leaders from across the continent for an eight week intensive study program around entrepreneurship.
Neo Sekhesa – Lesotho – Micro-Distillery - House of Lindford – Neo is a Bio-Technologist who fell in love with food processing. After looking at her budgets and noticing how much money she spent on spirits, she thought to herself that she could make them herself and the House of Lindford was born. The main product
Lindford Vodka is produce in small batches for select customers. They are also ready to introduce a “Gin” offering for a client’s event. A friend encouraged her to apply to the YALI fellowship, but she hesitated because she didn’t want to leave her “baby” for six weeks. She spoke with a mentor an ambassador who explained that if the employees ran the company into the ground she would have learned everything necessary to build it back up.
Abiola Peter Adetunji – Nigeria – Paedet Natural Foods Limited – Peter has a background in electrical engineering but decided he didn’t want to work on gadgets, but wanted to help people. He launched his company to produce a cereal “Funio” which is made from a high protein grain from a specific species of millet. His cereal has as much protein as an egg more than quinoa and it’s gluten-free. The company’s other product is a cereal made of “finger millet.” He mentions women of birthing age using these high protein cereals to ensure health babies. He talks about the spirit of his country and the fact that you can find Nigerians all over the planet from Siberia to Hawaii. Nigerians are an industrious people. He shares that he wanted to participate in the YALI fellowship to have an impact on the emergence of the continent.
For more information on the Young African Leadership Initiative
For more information on Neo Sekhesa
For more information on Abiolo Peter Adetunji