Enock Nkulanga is the founder of LeadMinds Africa, a non-profit organization equipping and connecting the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders in Africa.
He is a leading development practitioner whose career spans education, community building, youth leadership development, and advocacy. Enock Nkulanga’s work was recognized by the President of the United States, Barack Obama in 2018 as he delivered the Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Enock Nkulanga shared with Today Africa about his entrepreneurial journey.
Tell us about yourself and what LeadMinds Africa is all about?
Enock Nkulanga is a Pan-African, a Pan-Africanist at heart. At the very core, I really love Africa. And I believe that the future of the world is here. I was born and raised on a smaller farm in Uganda. I was educated in Uganda. So I currently live in Kampala, Uganda.
In the field of education and youth leadership development for close to a decade now. My career started in Rwanda, actually in high school. And I was in charge of coordinating the leadership program. So I really understood the kind of questions that young people were asking and the kind of answers that they were seeking.
That’s part of my deep belief in the potential of young people and also my curiosity to really continue working with young people. So after three years, I came back to Uganda, started working again with another organization to expand access to education in Uganda and Kenya.
After close to five years, I embarked on a journey to found LeadMinds Africa. Because growing up as a young boy in a village in the central parts of Uganda. I thought that the world really started and ended with my village.
But the moment I entered the school and graduated from college, my whole world had changed and expanded. So, my mindset was expanded from thinking that the world starts with my village and ends with it, to now understanding that the world is really a vast universe beyond this small village where I grew up.
I am really deeply passionate about education and the kind of transformation that leaders can cause on a continent like ours. So I founded LeadMinds to really bring together people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and across borders to focus on how together we can work, re-tap into our creative genius, our creative resourcefulness, and really shape the next generation of leaders that can turn around this continent.
So we do leadership development, starting within high schools. When I started going to school, of course, I started going to a school in the next village from where I grew up. If we can bring together more young people in rural areas and show them that it is really possible for you to grow up, to be born and grow up in a small village.
But then you have this whole premise of becoming an influential person in life. That is a cause that I have devoted myself to pursuing. And that is really what LeadMinds is about, equipping the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs that can solve the complex problems of Africa.
What inspired you into starting LeadMinds Africa?
That is a very interesting question. I rarely get asked that kind of question, by the way. To be honest, I grew up in a family where I did have very strong role models in regards to building a business or starting an organization.
But also, as a young boy, I closely watched my parents. My mom is so entrepreneurial. She had a small business growing on at our home. And growing up on a farm, my dad really focused on flipping cows. Fertilizes them and then sells them at a higher price and sometimes buys two or three more cows out of just one cow.
That is the level of inspiration that I had. And that was the kind of example that I watched as a young boy. It sparked my curiosity as I continued to watch my parents. The other thing is as a young boy going to this primary school in our village, I signed three books, the one on Martin Luther King Jr, another one on Mother Teresa, and another one on Mahatma Gandhi.
I signed these big books and took them home and started to read them and started to understand how a single person can really cause change, cause transformation, reshape a whole country.
That again continued to inspire me to really see myself as a younger boy. But also understand that if I stood for something, if I pursued something, it could lead to something big, or it could lead to really inspiring others who can continue to push them with the same narrative, the same cause, the same style, like pursuing a certain path in their life.
Then I was also lucky to have mentors early on in my life, for instance, in high school. And they started to reshape how I thought about a career that I needed to pursue, the kind of career options that I had.
So then when I also started working, my job really put me in a position where I interacted with young people on a daily basis and interacted with their passions, with their visions for Africa.
From that point, growing up in a family where I had role models of watching closely my parents do businesses here and there, and then reading books, biographies about these three visionaries who reshaped the futures of their nations, and then going to a school where I was able to access mentors
Then that caused me to rethink, leading me to a place, a space within myself, where I had to rethink my own potential and how I can start to bring people together to really contribute to a kind of Africa that we want to see or leave behind.
What were the challenges that you faced in the beginning and how did you overcome them?
(laughs) It is quite interesting to start building something in places where there are no significant examples of people who have built things and they are successful. It’s quite a challenge to navigate mentally.
Because people don’t really have tangible examples that they can look at and say this person started a business, this person built an organization, and the organization has gone on to impact millions and millions of people.
So growing up in a village like mine and even beyond my village I feel confident enough to really step forward and build. And then starting to tell people, I am resigning from my job. I am pursuing this mission.
Sometimes even the people that you have will start to look at you and they are like, is he going crazy? Is he really normal? What is wrong with him? So that was the first challenge, that there are no significant examples or models that a young person like me can learn from.
That’s why most of the young people in Africa who are building significant things, you find that sometimes they get most of the mentorship or most of the support from outside the continent, because there are a few examples.
Only that these days, there are really significant things that are happening around Africa. And I think the generation right now and the next generation to come is going to build on a very strong foundation. So that was number one.
Number two, how do you raise resources in a region where there are no significant startup funds or impact investors. That is a very challenging field to navigate as well. So I had to really think outside the box, bring together people who believe in the vision and communicate the vision and over-communicate the vision.
Because we started out with the volunteers, people who say, we believe in this vision and we are really willing to step forward and support you. Two things already I have highlighted. Growing up in a community, in a region where there are no significant examples of people who have been successful building organizations or businesses.
Number two, how do you raise resources in a region where they are not significant? For instance, established startup funds or impact investment funds. Number three, having a job before and saying, yes, I have had this job for quite a while and it has been a nice ride.
But I have learned enough and I feel I am in a position to step forward and do something in my time before it is too late. Because here, what people understand best is you have a job, you wake up every day, you report to the office at 8 or 9. The moment people think that you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
So building an organization in a region that understands jobs better than pursuing visions and missions is a huge challenge. And of course, we have had to fail many times. We have had to fail many times. Being able to deal with finding ways to navigate the failure, the frustrations from failing.
How has registering your business in the US helped in fundraising and forming a partnership that is helping in achieving your mission?
If you’re building a social enterprise or a non-profit organization, for instance, for the case of LeadMinds Africa, as long as it’s possible, it’s always advisable to establish another entity on the state side that serves as a fundraising channel for the kind of work that we do.
It was out of experience that I had already worked with the organizations and I understood that the way we are raising funds as well was through establishing another entity in the US, a 501C3 tax exempt charity on the state side that really establishes trust for people who believe in the vision and the mission and the work that we do.
It is one of those things that establishes trust in regards to impact investors or donors. So it has been an interesting avenue for us to shape partnerships to also bring people who support our work.
What are the programs you offer that help in achieving your mission of equipping and inspiring young minds?
The first program that I can touch on is the Mind Street Leadership Program in high schools. We focus on implementing a values-based leadership culture in 26 high schools in five regions of Uganda. That is one program that I can significantly touch on.
And what we do, we support these young people in understanding really the concept of leadership and how they can become leaders in their communities. We have a strong focus, of course, on communities because communities are really laboratories for transformation.
And the moment this generation misses that, then Africa might not change significantly. We might remain the same or just not some kind of little progress. But if we can reshape a generation of leaders that understand that everything starts with communities, then I think we are going to make noticeable progress ahead.
So we implement this program on a monthly basis in these schools. These young people go through understanding the concept of leadership, developing their values, and understanding who they really are.
And then positioning them to think about the challenges that their communities face and how they can significantly contribute to sort of those kinds of challenges and setting these communities on a path of transformation. They learn about starting businesses and how they can solve huge challenges like unemployment. So that is number one.
Within this very programme, we also host an annual leadership summit, bringing together young people who participate in the leadership program. So they come together in an annual leadership summit for three days, where they convene to meet mentors, to meet influential figures in the country who interact with them, speak to them, and work across with them for three days.
Then we also really focus on mentoring these young people through a developmental relationship. There is nothing, nothing that transforms a young person’s life like access to a mentor. That is so significant.
On an advanced level we host what is called the leaders forum that focuses on young professionals, young people who are transitioning into the job market and those that have already worked on their ideas and have established projects of impact in their countries, in their communities.
We convene them on a quarterly basis and bring employers, people who have established a track record in their field to really engage with these young people, with these young changemakers. But most importantly, through the leaders forum, we focus on creating a peer-to-peer network of young and emerging changemakers.
So that they can really have a kind of a community where they can bounce ideas off, like, you know, from mentors also from each other and understand how they are navigating these challenges collectively. It is a platform where they really come and connect, learn and go ahead and impact their countries.
Then we are moving on to really establish a scholars program. We are going to offer a thousand scholarships to young women who are 18 and above. It doesn’t matter where they are, as long as they are in Africa or across the world, and they are interested in benefiting from our scholarship, then we have a thousand scholarships open for this year.
And we are doing this in partnership with Cornell University. We have five courses that create one single program from Cornell University. And when a young woman enrolls by the end of the program, they receive a certificate from Cornell University.
This is something that is significant and as long as a young woman is 18 and above, they have data and they have a laptop, then they can benefit from this program. As we continue to grow, we are going to focus on building a fellowship program that brings together 22 young emerging leaders in the East Africa region who will convene for six months to really work on 22 challenges.
And by the end of the six months, every young leader who goes through our fellowship program will be able to graduate from the fellowship program with an idea they have worked on, refined, and moved forward to launch.
Through that, we can consistently support them with mentorship. And whenever we can, we avail like funds for them to continue to implement and scale their idea.
Read Also: Remarkable Journey of the Business Leaders in Nigeria
What are the biggest challenges that these young minds are having and how are you helping them close up the gaps?
I think the challenges we have seen is the misconception around the concept of leadership. Most of them don’t of course have a clear understanding of what leadership is and what it is not. So when we come in, we really support them to understand clearly who a leader is and who a leader is not, and exactly how they can step forward to implement that in reality.
The other thing is young people having ideas of how they really want to offer themselves, how they want to really contribute to transformative change in their communities. But the how is a challenge. They don’t know how they can do that.
They have this idea, a huge transformative idea, but they are lacking on the side of how they can bring that into reality. So that is the other thing that I can touch on. Then I also think about the aspect of doubt. They clearly don’t understand that they have potential, and they are the ones that we have been waiting for.
They are the ones that can actually contribute to significant change that we seek on the African continent. So three clear gaps that I could touch on is not having a clear understanding of the concept of leadership, having ideas but not understanding how to bring them to reality.
Three, doubting their own potential and how much of it transformative change they can cause on the continent. And I think number four is the perception about their own continent. Thinking that all the great things are beyond the continent and not really understanding that Africa has everything in regard to access to funds and also, you know, mentors and a supportive system.
They think they need to go to Silicon Valley to build and bring this, the ideas that they have to life and understand they don’t believe in the promise of the continent. The truth is that sometimes I sympathize with the young people on the African continent because sometimes you can look around and see that our leaders also are not focused on building these ecosystems that support the creative geniuses that we have.
After the six months whereby 22 people worked on their ideas, will you be investing financially on these ideas?
That is something that we really want to do. But it will depend on if we are capable of doing that. That is something that we significantly believe in. Most of the ideas on the continent die before they are five years old. And one of the things that has really contributed to that is lack of access to consistent capital.
What we have noticed is access to capital that is on and off. That doesn’t really support significantly the entrepreneurs on the African continent. What is significant is being able to access capital, predictable funding.
If the aspect of access to predictable funding is fixed, then the other thing that is really very important is these entrepreneurs, these leaders being able to access mentorship. I believe strongly in three things. I believe in education, in mentorship, and then if we are looking at the aspect of transforming Africa, then we can’t really ignore access to capital.
If the leaders, the young people we have on the continent are equipped with the right skills and then they have continued to be able to do so, then we can have a better mentorship and then they have access to capital. The kind of transformation that we can see in Africa is unimaginable, is immeasurable.
You were recognized by the former US president, Barack Obama. What impact did it have on your mission and LeadMinds Africa as a whole?
President Barack Obama mentioning my name and highlighting the work that I did for me was really a strong call to action. That is how I processed it after it happened. I processed it as a strong call to action, a strong affirmation that I am on the right path.
What I am doing, matters. And it is significant for Africa and the world. For me, it was really kind of a confidence booster to believe in what I was already doing and continue on the same path, but going more bold and never backing down.
For me, that is how I processed it after. So it was a great moment for me. And I significantly, I really want to thank Barack Obama for taking the time to highlight work that is done by emerging leaders on the African continent.
It wasn’t just me in that speech he highlighted, there were many others and he has continued to highlight many young people on the African continent. I salute everyone who wakes up every day to add a brick on the collective aspiration to transform this continent.
Read Also: How Omowunmi Omoseyindemi is Revolutionizing Last-mile Logistics in Nigeria
What key lesson have you learned in your journey as a social entrepreneur?
I have learned that you can never build something big alone. It can never happen. You have to find people who understand what you want to build and bring them along. And continue to show them the way of leadership. So you can never build something big alone.
Number two, when you are bringing a bold vision into reality, you have to focus on communication and communication alone. Don’t ever think that you have over-communicated, as long as you can communicate what your vision is about.
Because people easily forget. The more you communicate the more you are going to stay with the more you’ll build a supportive system around a big vision. Number three, never think that your background can really determine exactly how you’re going to end in life. If no one has ever built something in your family, maybe it is your turn to build it.
Believe in yourself, believe in your capacity, even when there are no clear examples of other people before you have done it. Maybe you are the one that your family needs to reshape exactly how certain things are done and how the next generation is going to handle things.
I think number four, resources exist in the world. If you are looking at, for instance, capital to find your idea, resources exist in the world. This world has enough resources. The key thing is to know where those resources are. As an entrepreneur, it is very important to know where the resources are.
The last one and very significant is you need to learn how to build and work alone. Most of the time you are going to be lonely. You are going to feel like you are not making any progress. You are going to feel like you are on the wrong path. Maybe you need to pivot.
So you need to understand as an entrepreneur that when you step forward to build something, you are going to feel most of the time that you are alone. So learn, shape a mindset of learning how to be alone. And that is how you are going to depend on God and prayer.
What advice would you give to others, especially the younger ones, who are starting their business?
The advice that I can give is that they are going to fail anyway, whether they start or not. So that failure is really part of the journey. And if they are afraid not to start the business, they have failed already before they start. But even when they step forward and have this mindset that they are going to be successful.
The reality is that they are going to fail as long as they are on a journey to build a business or an impactful entity. So it is not good to be held back by the fear of failure. If you allow it to hold you back before you even start, you have already failed. And it is also key to start from a point that there are certain things that are not going to work out. So you better start anyway.
Number two is that relationships are key. If you are building a business, if you are building an organization, it is very important for people to know, for entrepreneurs to know that relationships are key. You will never build anything significant alone.
It’s key to focus on building intentional relationships with the people who have already done things or really accessing mentors. Because most of the time the mentors are the ones that have experience and anyway you do. If you’re an entrepreneur building a business or an organization, your experience is limited.
Number three, every entrepreneur, every person that has an idea. They have to first think about how they can build a business or an organization without capital. It is very significant to learn how to build things in circumstances where you don’t have capital.
To find out more contact Enock Nkulanga via:
Leave a comment below and follow us on social media for update:
- Facebook: Today Africa
- Instagram: Today Africa
- Twitter: Today Africa
- LinkedIn: Today Africa
- YouTube: Today Africa Studio
![Does Temu Ship to Nigeria? [A Comprehensive Guide]](https://todayafrica.co/wp-content/plugins/brave-popup-builder/assets/images/preloader.png)