History is made by people.
We find, document, study and develop the people shaping Africa's next chapter. This is where the idea came from, and who is accountable for it.
The teacher who did not need the book.
In Frank Tsuro's words
It began with a history teacher at Kutama College who rarely opened the textbook, and with the textbook itself. It was called People Making History.
My passion for history came from one person.
Sekuru Zvidzwa taught history at Kutama College, and he understood that a fact is only memorable when a story carries it. He rarely opened the textbook. He did not need to. Ours was the only class in the grade he taught, and when he left we understood the subject better than anybody else in the year.
Then the book was all we had. It was called People Making History.
It was a celebration of African leaders and what they made possible during the liberation struggle. I felt close to some of them. Not because of the offices they held, but because of what they did before anybody knew whether it would work.
Years later, thinking about the leadership challenges on this continent, I went back to that book.
Some of the people in it belong to their moment. Their contribution cannot be taken from them and it should not be. But the task has changed, and a person built for one task is not automatically built for the next one.
What has not changed is what made them worth writing about. They had vision. They cared whether everyone in their country was free, not only themselves. And they acted, at a time when acting was dangerous.
Vision, care and courage do not expire. The circumstances that demand them do.
So the question became simple. If those are still the qualities that matter, who has them now, and where would we look? Not necessarily in politics. More likely in a business, a laboratory, a classroom, a studio, a clinic, a farm. In the places where people are quietly doing difficult things that will matter later.
That is where the name came from. Not a celebration of the people in the book. An extension of them, in the present tense.
Because the people in that textbook were once young people living through an unfinished story. Nobody had told them they were making history. They were doing the work in front of them.
Somebody is doing that work today. The question is whether anybody is writing it down.
Frank Tsuro, Founder and Chief Curator
What we believe
Not forces, trends or systems on their own. People who decided something when they could have decided otherwise. That is why our subject is people rather than leadership.
The generation who won political freedom is part of what this continent inherited. They are not the last chapter. History is something we inherit, and something we make.
Building durable institutions is a different problem from removing an occupying power, and it asks for different capabilities. The full argument
We do not start with a list of important Africans. We find work that can be examined, document it, then ask what it reveals about judgement, courage and building things that last.
Recognition may come out of this work. It is not the reason for it. A list published before the method exists is worth nothing, and this continent already has several.
African stories with African context, voice and independence. Which is why there is not a single sunset, silhouette or borrowed pattern anywhere on this site.
A person can have extraordinary achievements and serious failures at the same time. A record that cannot hold both is not a record.
Two founders. One institution meant to outlast both.
Between them they have spent their working lives on the same question from two directions: what actually makes a person capable of leading something. If this works, in thirty years the archive will matter more than either of them.
Frank Tsuro
Frank has spent his working life in the room where the decision is actually made.
An independent advisor to chief executives, chairs and boards, a keynote speaker, and founder of FranklySpeaking, the firm that investigates the problems organisations keep repeating.
More about Frank
He gives leaders a second opinion before the decisions that are hard to undo. His work sits where judgement, honesty and execution meet: helping executives name the problem underneath the problem, and boards ask the question nobody in the room has asked.
His belief is simple: history does not check anybody's title. It is made by people who decide, and then carry what the decision costs.
Andrew Tsuro
Leadership is not a position Andrew studies from a distance.
Andrew Tsuro is a leadership coach and facilitator whose work starts with a clear belief: leadership should produce results that exceed expectations.
More about Andrew
His work sits where human behaviour, communication and practical execution meet. He helps graduates enter the workplace with confidence, managers lead with greater emotional intelligence, and executives communicate when the stakes are high.
His belief is simple: the best leadership is not installed from the outside. It is uncovered, strengthened, and turned into behaviour other people can trust.
We will add boards when there is real work for them to oversee.
When we do, their members will be named here, once they have agreed. Until then, three rules apply from the first day.
Nobody can pay for a place.
Not with a fee, a sponsorship or a table at a dinner. Money cannot put anyone into the Archive.
The people who choose do not raise money.
Choosing who is documented and raising money are two different jobs, done by different people. It is easier to set this up now than to fix it later.
Mistakes are corrected in public.
If we get something wrong, we add the correction where everyone can see it. We never quietly remove anything.