The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, is pleased to share the documentary film, The Spirit of Kanju: Leaders Transforming Africa. The film has been produced as part of The Imprint of Education – a five-year longitudinal cohort study of African Alumni of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program.
On November 23, 2023, alongside the Albert Luthuli Leadership Initiative, the University of Pretoria and the African Leadership Academy, the HSRC hosted a hybrid screening of the film, engaging in a dialogue with Mastercard Foundation Scholars and Alumni, educators, and interested stakeholders about leadership strategies in resource-scarce contexts.
In The Spirit of Kanju: Leaders Transforming Africa, we are introduced to 19 Alumni-filmmakers as well as the leaders they interviewed. Over a year-long period, these Scholars Program Alumni – using mobile phones, armed with equipment such as microphones, ring lights, and training from veteran filmmaker Eugene Paramoer – interrogated the concept of transformative leadership and documented the contributions of people they believed exemplified the leadership Africa needs. In the process, their own contributions as young leaders became evident.
As one Alumni filmmaker, Gadson Asiimwe explained: “Initially it seemed like we are going to tell our story about what kind of leaders we are. But then it tapped into something more interesting. These leaders that we have filmed, they became like role models to us. People we wouldn’t have imagined meeting or interviewing. And in interviewing them, that one-on-one inspired us. We got to see things we hadn’t seen before. It created a clear change in mindset about the kind of leaders that we want to be in the future, starting now.”
The Alumni filmmakers showcase leadership practices from across the African continent, including countries such as Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Rwanda, with each context offering new insight into the many practices of leadership.
On the African continent, many rich and creative practices respond to struggle and challenge.
Kanju is “the specific creativity born from African difficulty”, Dayo Olopade writes in her book, The Bright Continent(2015). In Yoruba, ‘kanju’ means to ‘rush or make haste’; in English, we might say it is to ‘hustle’, ‘strive’, ‘know how’ or ‘make do’,” writes Olopade.
The film portrays leadership as collaboration, action, innovation, love, and ubuntu. Ultimately, The Spirit of Kanju shows that leadership is complex. It is every day but exceptional, human, extraordinary, innovative, and responsive. It requires working together but also starting alone. The film follows a range of leaders who make something out of nothing, do leadership and not just speak leadership, and lead in such a way as to invite others along for the journey.
Alumni filmmaker Clarity Mapengo sums up the experience by saying: “My takeaway from the film, it’s mostly just seeing how everyone who was in the film, people that were being interviewed – we have different layers and unearthing those layers and just seeing this beautiful tapestry of what transformative leadership is within the mundane life that we think people are living… And that might help us have a roadmap in developing or encouraging and empowering the younger generation to become better leaders and transform our continent.”
You can watch The Spirit of Kanju: Leaders Transforming Africa
As part of a research study that investigates how university education impacts people’s lives on the African continent, a group of 19 graduates, all alumni of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program worked with a filmmaker to document the contributions of people they believed exemplified the leadership Africa needs. In the process their own contributions as young leaders became evident.
Watch the film trailer
In The Spirit of Kanju: leaders transforming Africa, we are introduced to some of these graduates as well as the leaders they interviewed using mobile phones and armed with equipment such as microphones, ring lights and some filmmaking knowledge supplied by veteran filmmaker Eugene Paramoer. They showcase leadership practices across the African continent, from Ghana to Uganda, South Africa to Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda, with each context offering new insight into the many practices of leadership. The film portrays leadership as collaboration, as action, as innovation and as love and ubuntu.
