It’s Good When Things Go Wrong: African Leaders on Growing Through Challenge

What helps leaders persevere through uncertainty, trauma, and conflict—all while serving communities navigating these same challenges? The McNulty Foundation was proud to co-host a mainstage dialogue on this topic this fall, as part of the Africa Impact Forum in Cape Town, South Africa.

The panel was moderated by Ann Lamont, a McNulty Prize Laureate recognized for uniting diverse stakeholders to support children orphaned by the AIDS crisis. Joining her were Prize Winner Mohamed Ali Diini, founder and director of Iftin Global; Prize Laureate Gary Campbell, co-founder of FUEL; and Catalyst Fund recipient Mpadi Makgalo, founder and CEO of HEAL SA. Watch the full panel conversation, and read on for key insights.

Sometimes, uncertainty is personal. Gary Campbell shared how, after leaving a successful corporate career, he was recruited by Charles Luyckx, a friend and fellow co-founder of FUEL, to take on the ambitious mission of reforming South Africa’s school food systems so every child could access quality meals and focus on learning. Realizing they had little idea where to start, they spent a year visiting schools in each district to understand how food delivery actually worked. What they discovered was that the issue lay not with the people—who were overwhelmingly mission-driven—but with how the system was structured.

“It was after crashing into walls for three years that we were forced to sit down and ask ‘well, what is the lever?’ The lever was the people in the system,” said Gary. By implementing stronger metrics at each step of the process, their venture, FUEL, dramatically improved South Africa’s delivery of quality food to students, supported by Education Ministry officials willing to try new approaches.

The takeaway? Hard challenges can be catalytic. “It’s good when things go wrong, because that’s where organizations change,” said Réjane Woodroffe, director of Bulungula Incubator, a community-led rural development initiative on South Africa’s Wild Coast. Indeed, it’s how they evolve, become resilient, and become antifragile.

Réjane reflected on her family’s displacement under apartheid and how, even then, their experience did not compare to the hardship faced in neglected rural regions designated as “black homelands.” Without clean water or proper nutrition, every child begins life on the back foot—and survival to age five is not guaranteed. Bulungula develops talent internally, partnering with community members to take on responsibilities and leadership roles. This has resulted in a massive upskilling of people who, despite being failed in youth by government neglect in education, have the talent and ability to fill those roles themselves.

Mpadi Makgalo was inspired to act after getting mental health support herself— something her family didn’t know about until she was interviewed on the news about HEAL SA—to use her entire savings to start HEAL South Africa during the lockdown phase of the pandemic when people were struggling even more than before—and as she pointed out, South African youth already scored extraordinarily highly on measures of stress and suicidal ideation. While talking about mental health in South Africa can often be “a lonely journey,” she emphasized that she was always mindful of how much more dangerous it is for everyone not to talk about it.

Even when not everyone supported Mpadi, she was only further motivated by rejection. That perseverance has paid off. Their data now show that HEAL SA is embraced across society, including by men accessing and white South Africans—groups she once feared might not see HEAL SA as a resource for them. Their engagement affirms the model’s impact.

Mohamed Ali Dini, founder and director of Iftin Global, shined light on how trauma harms people’s ability to imagine new possibilities themselves. The organization started as an economic development program and startup accelerator, inspired by a local inventor who sold non-electric espresso machines to cafes in a city with incredibly high electricity costs. Shortly, however, Mohamed realized that mental health was an inescapable barrier in a conflict-affected setting. Upon setting out to recruit help to overcome that barrier, he encountered a new barrier: Mogadishu, a city of two million, had only one psychiatrist. Iftin’s mission expanded to create Somalia’s first mental health workforce, supporting professionals and reaching more than 300,000 people to date.

Mohamed is also the visionary behind the forthcoming Iftin Peace Hub, which introduces a new model for post-conflict reconstruction in Somalia: an integrated campus where young people can heal, learn, build livelihoods, and reconnect with community. It will provide trauma-informed mental health services and psychosocial counseling to prevent recruitment into violence and support reintegration of at-risk youth and former combatants. By centralizing healing, learning, and economic opportunity, the Hub will enable Iftin to expand its reach and engage communities that were previously inaccessible, serving as a beacon and model for progress across the continent.

At large, this dialogue lies at the heart of the Africa Impact Forum’s mission: leaders working to build the Good Society—a vision of Africa grounded in integrity, collaboration, and sustainable progress. Watch the full panel conversation to explore these insights further: