By Alex Joseph Mbise

Like a warrior ready for the fight, the then 9 year old Alex Mbise stepped into a head teacher’s office, determined to end the poverty that characterized his life. He lacked shoes, uniform, school fees, writing materials…all a child needs but all he wanted then was to go to school. With this striking note of determination, he enrolled himself in a local primary school and was the oldest child in his class but that still did not discourage him. Sometimes, he walked barefooted and hungry to school but that still did not discourage him. His tenacity was indeed striking! And each time he thought of his situation, he was fuelled by an ardent wish to reverse his trend, to provide a better future for his children and for disadvantaged groups in his community. During his long walks to school, he visualized a great future and meditated upon it day and night.

One day, Alex got tired of the poverty at home and walked to a local school and straight to the principal’s office alone to register himself for standard one. At the tender age of nine, he had a drive that was stronger than his age. The motivation behind him was poverty in his community . He believed and still believes that education is a crucial tool to transforming communities and creating solutions to societal problems like poverty. He believed that through education will be able to fight poverty in the future. That is why he decided to register himself in school although none of his family members understood the importance of education.

He ran small businesses mainly selling plastics bags and boiled eggs in open air markets twice every week, saved the money and used it to invest in the rearing of chicken and goats and that was how he paid for his primary and secondary school education. He was also able to buy uniform and books. Skipping school to look for money wasn’t fun, but it got him to where he is today. In 2015  he graduated from Tumaini University with a Bachelor of Business Administration under a government sponsorship.

As a leader, public speaker and social entrepreneur, Alex is a founder of Jamii Solutions Tanzania which is a non govermental organisation committed to empowering community to promoting faster economic growth in social entrepreneurship and labor intensive sectors, including agriculture by using positive community development approaches to empower community and educate them with viable business options in fast growing economies, focusing the income generating potentials across agricultural and other value chains and facilitating access to information , skills and opportunities to ensure successful business startups and self employment. The organisation has so far empowered more than 1000 youths with the access to information and skills for social entrepreneurship and technical skills on business start-ups, groups formation and financial literacy. 

This lionhearted young leader has a passion for politics and has been politically active in his community in Arusha-Tanzania. His vision is to  mentor thousands of youth. He also has a clear plan of running for office as a Member of parliament in 2025. As a young husband and father, he owes his balance of work and family to his very supportive wife who is also passionate about civic leadership.

Alex got a chance to participate and graduated from an amazing leadership training YALI RLC E.A  (under Civic Leadership track, Cohort 12) that took him  to the next level of understanding, experience, network and exposure .It was a transformative leadership experience.  He is also grateful to be selected to serve as ROI Africa Global Youth Ambassador to Tanzania starting 2017 to 2020 which is a social enterprise committed to meeting the community’s social needs and developing young dynamic leaders who will close-up Africa’s leadership deficits and redefine the future of the continent.