Can leaders and entrepreneurs be raised?
Many people believe leaders are born. Our tracer study and nine cohorts of entrepreneurship training suggest that leadership and enterprise can be grown on purpose, and show how much we still need to learn.
The question is old and it matters for every young African weighing where to spend a year of their life. If leadership is mostly temperament, training is a nice extra. If it can be developed, then the way we form young people is one of the most practical investments a country can make. Our work rests on the second view, so we owe it to the public to test it with our own records.
This piece brings together two sets of observations: what graduates of our leadership training told us in our first Tracer Study, and what we have recorded across nine cohorts of UBC Sauder LIFT, the entrepreneurship programme we run with the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
What our graduates told us
Our first Tracer Study followed up graduates of our leadership training and asked them to rate their own leadership before and after the training on a scale of 1 to 5. The findings were presented to our team on 6 June 2026 by Emmanuel Goodglory, who leads our research. On average, respondents rated their leadership about 1.28 points higher after training than before it, reaching an average of 4.43 out of 5 after training. That places the average starting point at roughly 3.15.
We also asked whether graduates are still connected to our community. 84.6% of respondents said they are. A leadership network only works if people stay in it, so we read this as a sign that the training builds relationships that last beyond the classroom.
Respondents rated leadership team development as their strongest area of growth and their own wellbeing as their weakest. Respondents asked for more mentorship and a stronger alumni connection, and those requests are shaping what we do next.
A smaller survey of one Leadership Development Training cohort points the same way. Ten of the fourteen graduates in that cohort responded, a response rate of 71.4%. All ten said they would recommend the programme to a friend with a score of 9 or 10 out of 10, and all ten rated the mentorship they received from their sector at 4 or 5 out of 5.
What nine cohorts of entrepreneurs show
Since our partnership with UBC Sauder began, 575 people have applied to UBC Sauder LIFT across nine cohorts, from LIFT 1.0 to LIFT 9.0. That count includes every application recorded in our tracking system, whatever happened next. 103 have graduated. Applications have risen from 76 for the first cohort to 90 for the latest, which tells us the demand for practical enterprise training is real and steady.
Most applicants come from Accra (537 of 575), with 36 from Kumasi. Our tracking system reports a graduation rate of 93.6%. That rate is calculated only over people recorded as attending the programme. It leaves out the people who were accepted but never attended, so it describes how well we keep the entrepreneurs who start, and says little about how many applicants we finally serve.
What this evidence can and cannot show
Taken together, our observations are consistent with the view that leadership and enterprise can be raised. People who go through our programmes report real growth, most stay connected, and demand for enterprise training keeps rising. We want to be plain about the limits.
The Tracer Study scores are self-reported, and the score before training was recalled after the training ended, which tends to exaggerate gains. The number of people who responded was not recorded with the findings, and the response rate was described as low, so the people who answered may be those who had the best experience. There is no comparison group of similar young people who did not take part. The cohort survey covers a single cohort of ten respondents.
For UBC Sauder LIFT, our tracking records are uneven between cohorts. Several early cohorts have no graduation status recorded, and LIFT 9.0 has no graduates recorded yet. Above all, we do not yet have reliable data on what graduates go on to build: businesses started, jobs created or income earned. Graduating is an important step, and the outcomes that follow are what the question is really about.
Our second Tracer Study is designed to close some of these gaps. It asks graduates about their occupation, the jobs they have created and the people they reach, and it asks for a baseline before each area of growth. We will publish what it finds.
Press and enquiries
Emmanuel Goodglory
Director, Research, Africa Impact & Global Visibility
The GracedLife Leadership Centre
egoodglory@gracedlifeleaders.org
General enquiries
TGLC Research Desk
research@gracedlifeleaders.org