Stepping into Africa's future

Nozipho Dlamini was lucky enough to land a spot at a technical college, studying marketing, after she graduated from high school. It was always a struggle, though. She couldn't afford books and tuition fees. Finally, she had to drop out.

It is a common problem among bright students living in the sprawling urban townships and impoverished rural areas of South Africa. With few job prospects, Ms. Dlamini could have gone home to languish in her impoverished town in the KwaZulu-Natal Province, as many youths do. Instead, she ended up at the CIDA University.

Now a first-year student, surrounded by a group of friends in the university canteen, Dlamini sounds almost grateful for her previous misfortunes. "I don't have to buy books, I don't have to pay for anything," she says. "I enjoy being here to the fullest. It's a home."

To its supporters, the Community and Individual Development Association (CIDA) University represents nothing less than a revolution - a grand experiment in higher education. Founded in 1999 by four Johannesburg businessmen, it is a virtually free university that operates on a shoestring, largely through corporate support. The goal is to mold motivated students from the country's poorest and most marginalized communities into a new generation of African business leaders and high-powered entrepreneurs who will spread knowledge and prosperity across the continent.

In short, it is an institution created for students just like Dlamini.

In the mid-1990s, CIDA's four co-founders were teaching meditation skills to high school students in the township of Alexandra. The students, who worked hard to graduate, often couldn't find jobs or afford university after leaving school, says CEO and co-founder Taddy Blecher.

It is a dilemma heightened by the legacy of apartheid in South Africa. While decades of deliberately inferior education once barred most blacks from all but menial, low-paying jobs, many young South Africans still find themselves trapped in poverty, held back by poor education and lack of opportunity. South Africa's unemployment rate is more than 40 percent.

Only about 9 percent of South Africans attend university. Of those that do, 85 percent either drop out or fail, often because of financial problems.

"If we want to create meaning- ful economic improvement in South Africa and Africa as a whole, there is no way other than developing our people with all aspects of knowledge," Mr. Blecher says. "We wanted to create a university that could get education to everybody everywhere."

Back in 1999, Blecher and his colleagues, Conrad Mhlongo, Mburu Gitonga, and Richard Peycke, had no textbooks, no professors, and no computers. Not even a building or a phone. Nevertheless, Blecher, an energetic 36-year-old who had been working as an international management consultant, set to work, contacting rural schools around the country to recruit students, and persuading previous employers and colleagues to donate buildings, equipment, and their own time.

Today 1,600 students, all of them from disadvantaged backgrounds, are earning business degrees at a fraction of the normal cost. All are supported by scholarships, often financed by top South African corporations. Many have also landed internships with these companies. The benefit is mutual: While students gain valuable connections and work experience, corporations needing to transform their demographics gain access to a pool of emerging black talent.

"We see it as sort of an incubator for the talented leaders of the future," says Galia Durbach, an executive with First National Bank of South Africa, which donated a building to CIDA and also gives $500,000 per year.

On a continent where only 3 percent of people have a degree, CIDA offers a low-cost, innovative model for spurring economic development, Blecher says. "We could have hundreds of these institutions throughout Africa educating people," he says.

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