To improve leadership capabilities in mid-career professionals working in nutrition-relevant sectors

The conceptual document that outlines why leadership development should be an important functional capability to develop in the nutrition fraternity in Africa will be written by a core team of ANLP Alumni

Design two 10-day experiential leadership development workshops to be hosted in Nigeria and South Africa. Participants will be mid-career professionals working in various sectors in nutrition and will be selected by a competitive process. Participants are exposed to a range of leadership topics and the programme is designed to provide an intensive matrix structure that provides sufficient challenge to participants to facilitate personal growth. Topics that are covered include amongst others leadership and management, self-awareness, reflection, communication, advocacy, multi-sector collaboration. Transfer of learning is achieved by multiple reflective techniques during the workshop. The focus of the workshops are individual leadership growth applied to each individuals unique working environment.

We will also design and host two workshops that aim to combine leadership capability development with technical capacity development. This is also done to illustrate that leadership is not a position but rather the ability to implement change in a complex environment. A key element of these workshops are that participants gain insight into how leadership relates to implementing the change necessary in nutrition and to provide a clear picture of the entry points participants have to lead change in nutrition within their organisational mandates.

For the online leadership development workshop we will design and host a 10-module blended workshop that runs over a period of 13 weeks. Participants will apply to attend and be selected via a competitive process. The workshop will be a combination of self-paced learning using materials that have been developed for similar Francophone workshops and weekly online group engagements. A typical module will contain a number of narrated slide shows, some reading material, a short focused assignment, a contribution to a discussion forum and a reflection on learning. Facilitated weekly live online sessions supplement the self-paced materials and contribute to acquiring networking skills in an online environment.