Leadership must build for next generation - Irene Horsham says as she launches Founder to Founder
Lawyer, entrepreneur and higher-education leader, Irene Ansa-Asare Horsham, has urged founders and business leaders across Africa to focus on building institutions that can outlive them.
She said leadership should be measured by how well it prepared the next generation to succeed.
“Beyond passing on our learning to the next generation, we must actually build for the next generation. If the next generation surpasses us in all ways, which they must do for Africa to thrive, then we’ll know that our work has succeeded,” Mrs Horsham said.
She made the call at the launch of her book, Founder to Founder: Notes from Irene’s Desk, in Accra last Tuesday.
The book is a collection of 84 essays that draw on lived experience to guide founders through the process of starting, sustaining and passing on enterprises.
Structured across screen arcs, it explores legacy, systems, succession and governance, urging leaders to build organisations that outlived them and empowered the next generation.
Systems-led approach
Mrs Horsham, who is the outgoing Rector of the Mountcrest University College, also urged leaders to build enduring institutions which relied on clear structures, governance and succession planning, not passion or vision alone.
She argued that African organisations struggled to survive beyond their founders because they were built around individuals rather than strong systems.
“The reality is that a strong system reduces dependence on the founder to the point that the founder's presence becomes irrelevant.
That, in my view, is actually a good thing,” she said.
Drawing on over two decades of experience in the courtroom, boardroom and classroom, Mrs Horsham mentioned that while Africa was rich in talent and imagination, it often undervalued strategy, institutional design and long-term planning.
She consequently called for a shift from crisis management to systems thinking, saying growth became accidental when structure and process were ignored.
Mrs Horsham also challenged leaders to rethink legacy, describing it as reciprocal.
Power of books, panel discussion
The Minister of Labour, Jobs and Employment, Dr Abdul-Rashid Hassan Pelpuo, stressed that a single book could open minds, reshape ambition and expose readers to worlds beyond their immediate environment.
He described Founder to Founder as an entry point into lived experience, arguing that reading transformed curiosity into knowledge and ignorance into possibility.
The Co-founder of the Mountcrest University College, Kweku Ansa-Asare, emphasised that legacy was sustained through intentional storytelling and early engagement of children in the founding journey.
He argued that African families must consciously pass on knowledge across generations, allowing younger people to ask questions, observe processes and gradually understand how institutions were built and preserved.
The Executive Sales and Marketing Director of the Delta Paper Mill & Alpha Industries, Jade Skaf, shared lessons from transitioning into a family business, stressing humility, learning through mistakes and respecting founder experience.
He said sustainability came from collaboration between generations, where founders allowed successors space to learn, while successors actively sought guidance to avoid repeating costly errors.
The Founder and CEO of the QA Consult Africa, Johnson Opoku Boateng, emphasised process, quality and people empowerment as foundations of sustainable enterprises.
He cautioned founders against hoarding knowledge, arguing that clear systems, shared vision and early engagement of teams and children alike were essential to building businesses that functioned even in the founder’s absence.
