The Sunduolos Advanced Leadership Training (SALT) Institute has graduated its first batch of Masters of Arts students at its New Achimota campus in the Greater Accra region.
A total number of 15 students graduated at the master’s level; with 9 students from the class of Master of Arts in International Relations and Diplomacy and 6 students from the class of Master of Arts in Leadership and Management.
The guest speaker, Professor Olusola Oyewole in his address at the maiden ceremony, called for collaborative efforts in championing transformative leadership to resolve leadership and developmental crisis across the African continent.
Prof Oyewole explained that the “change that Africa needs is to have a new set of leaders. These leaders with work with different values from those that have led us.”
Also, he called for a change in the higher schools’ educational “colonial curricula and replace them with curricula with learning outcomes that can make our youths to be innovative and acquire capabilities to solve the problems of the continent and promote our development.”
Prof Oyewole reiterated the need to “teach African history to produce our quest for transformation leaders.”
The overall best graduating student was awarded to Catherine Chepkurui Langa’t a Kenyan national who offered a Master of Arts in International Relations and Diplomacy.
The Acting Rector of the SALT Institute, Dr Fatima Alabo in her address said: “We are driven by our firm resolve that the better years of the African continent lie ahead of us. Through this divinely inspired project, as we believe SALT Institute to be, our hopes lie in God who rules in the affairs of men, that He will raise for Himself a people transformed into His likeness of justice, righteousness and power, who through their knowledge of enterprise and purity of character, will serve God’s redemptive purposes across the continent.”
She added that: “At present, the master’s degree and certificate programmes are on full offer at the institute, while the bachelor’s degree programmes are yet to commence. The Management of the Institute is making frantic efforts to obtain accreditation for additional cutting-edge postgraduate degree programmes.”
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Barrister Emeka Nwankpa applauded the graduands for being resilient and expressed his faith in them leading the change across various sectors.
“Our delight is hinged upon the actualization of the vision of raising transformational leaders for our dear continent. Here at the SALT institute, we are fully convinced that our human capital development efforts will produce a new breed of servant leaders whose application of solid biblical principles will greatly impact upon the systems of governance and leadership across the continent.”
About SALT Institute
Sundoulos Advanced Leadership Training (SALT) Institute was founded in 2003 but its genesis dates to 1997. During that year’s edition of the annual continental prayer conference of the Intercessors for Africa (IFA), held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, God revealed to the intercessors that they faced “challenges in Africa that prayer alone by itself could not solve.
”It was further explained that African nations did not have good, proper foundations (the foundations not having been laid on the scriptures); secondly, the nations did not have servant leaders in their governments; thirdly, leaders in the nations did not know how to apply biblical principles to leadership. To tackle these challenges, IFA was directed to train and equip the leaders who will bring about the desired transformation in the land.
SALT Institute is therefore a response to that call. The institute is committed to raising, training, and developing servant leaders for business and public life in Africa as well as the global marketplace.