Rowland Kingsley, an alumnus of Students For Liberty (SFL) from Nigeria, who was a coordinator for ten years, co-organizes a yearly Global Capitalism Awareness Day event alongside Michael Malgeri.
Michael Malgeri is the creator of the “Johnny Profit” children’s book series. The book uses brief, enjoyable fiction to teach young readers the fundamentals of capitalism. Michael founded the Global Capitalism Awareness (GCA) and Rewards Of Capitalism; Knowledge, MORALITY, Empowerment (#ROCKME) movements in partnership with Liberty International to educate and empower young people across the globe on the power of economic liberty and the innovation it spawns.
Rowland hosted this year’s Global Capitalism Awareness event at Rivers State University and Tam Wills Education Centre, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, with the theme: Imagine Africa Driven by Capitalism, Free Trade, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship.
Rowland first became involved with SFL in 2010 when he attended conferences at the University of Ibadan. There, he joined the SFL Ibadan branch as a local coordinator and as representative of the social sciences department. Growing as a leader, he subsequently served as national coordinator in Sierra Leone. He was eventually appointed as the recruitment and expansion coordinator for West Africa, taking care of recruitment in countries like Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.
Before becoming involved with SFL, Rowland shared that he was one of the activists in the South-South geopolitical zone in Nigeria (the home of Nigeria’s crude oil reserves) where there had been significant agitation and civil rights activism. Through this experience, he had prior knowledge of what activism means, however getting on board with SFL as a coordinator gave him more professional knowledge around how to engage in activism.
Rowland shared, “With SFL it was like an official introduction to corporate activism. I learned how to engage policymakers and leaders. That was what SFL did; it moved me from an unofficial platform to an official platform to enable me to have important conversations with other young people.”
The third edition of the GCA event had more than 500 students from Rivers State University participating in learning sessions. One of the greatest results Rowland and his friend Michael have now gained is that Rivers State University is ready to partner with more think tanks. This year’s event was a collaboration with the university’s Department of Political Science.
“We hope to create a long-lasting relationship with the university to establish institutional programs for students to be taught about ideas of liberalism and capitalism.” Rowland shared.
The Institute for Economic Affairs and the Initiative for African Trade and Prosperity supported with 1500 copies each of the books, “An introduction to Trade and Globalization and an “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” both books authored by Eamonn Butler.
Rowland said, “While volunteering with SFL, I had the opportunity to go on several trainings. I took the SFL Academy courses, Atlas Network courses, and the local coordinator program. These gave me the leverage to do what I needed to do to advance freedom. SFL invested so many resources in terms of learning. We attended a lot of fellowships on liberty rights, and I was also invited to the top leadership retreat in Kenya, and other local coordinator retreats for several years. These built up my current knowledge. My success today is because I had the opportunity to learn with the SFL team and leaders.”
The GCA event had the support of several other pro-liberty think tanks and organizations like Liberty International, the Atlas Network, the Initiative for African Trade and prosperity, Ominira Initiative, and the Institute for Economic Affairs. A lot of these are affiliations Rowland built from his time as a coordinator with SFL and continued collaboration with other SFL volunteers and alumni.
Rowland Kinglsey and Michael Malgeri hope to partner with more universities in Nigeria to create a curriculum for the university through the think tanks to lecture students on capitalism and market economics.
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This piece solely expresses the opinion of the author and not necessarily the organization as a whole. Students For Liberty is committed to facilitating a broad dialogue for liberty, representing a variety of opinions.
