Alexander McLeod, founder of Formula Student Africa, explains how the initiative was launched in 2023 to harness Africa’s engineering talent and provide opportunities in automotive and renewable energy.
While the competition mirrors global formats, its focus is on education and advocacy, particularly e‑mobility.
High school learners are introduced to electrification through structured lessons, while tertiary students gain technical and commercial experience by building cars and managing teams.
Partnerships and sponsorships are vital for sustainability and growth. McLeod sees the programme as a pipeline for industry skills and envisions expansion across the continent with fully fledged competitions in future.
My name is Alexander McLeod. I am originally from South Africa but am currently living and working in the UK. When I arrived here five years ago, I discovered Formula Student, the competition that exists here in the UK and in Europe and in some other regions.
And one thing struck me is that there is so much engineering, technical talent that exists in South Africa and throughout Africa and I wondered why this competition didn’t exist on the African continent.
And that’s when I just decided to try and make it happen and created Formula Student Africa and together with the support of Iain Banner and his team at that time, we launched Formula Student Africa in 2023.
So I’m really excited that at least it got off the ground. So, that’s the background.
I’m not involved in motor racing but I am very passionate and very involved in empowerment and skills development work here in the UK and when I was living in South Africa.
So as soon as I saw the opportunity to create some kind of a project, some kind of an activity that provides opportunity in this space, I jumped at it. And as I said, that’s the birth of Formula Student Africa.
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It doesn’t really differ too much. At the end of the day, Formula Student Africa is about university students or higher education students, that could be colleges, technical colleges or university students, building a Formula style race car.
And for that car and the team to go through some assessment and then ultimately being scored and there being a winner. So the competition aspect is still very much the same as existing Formula Student competition activities outside of Africa.
But I think it’s the way in which we are wanting to deliver Formula Student Africa that is different.
So while existing Formula Student formats put competition first, we’re looking at putting education first – spreading awareness about careers studies opportunities in the automotive sector, more specifically the e-mobility sector, so everything around electrification, electric vehicles.
The advocacy for thinking about a potential future in the e-mobility industry, starts in high school.
We have a high school programme as part of Formula Student Africa where we are developing an 18-lesson programme that looks at educating learners in Grade 9, 10 and 11 on:
And then moving into higher education, we’re busy developing some bolt-on modules around electric vehicle technician courses and things like that.
So not looking to reinvent the wheel in terms of current technical qualifications, whether that’s, a qualification in the motor trade industry as they are, or engineering qualification, higher education, it’s looking to rather just add to what is already available, and looking at upskilling these learners and industry people in electric vehicles or e-mobility.
So again there’s not much difference in terms of the Formula Student concept. The competition is still there, so we still want tertiary education students to build cars and put them out there into a competition.
But we put immobility education and advocacy first. So that’s really the subtle difference between the existing Formula Student and Formula Student Africa.
As I said earlier we’re not really teaching them anything brand new. We’re certainly not creating any new content or any new skills programmes.
We’re looking to add to what is already available to the youth in South Africa, whether that’s at high schools, whether that’s in universities or colleges, TVET colleges. But I think the experience that they gain is extremely valuable, and it’s definitely transferable into industry.
If you look at a Formula Student team that exists at a university or potentially a TVET college, it’s set up like a Formula racing team. So you have a technical team and you have a non-technical team.
The technical team builds the vehicle and your non-technical team will respond to all the commercial or business activity of that Formula racing team.
For example, in your technical team you have people working on chassis or powertrains, and in the non-technical team you have people looking at sponsorship, marketing, HR because they’re looking to recruit students.
And then you also have a team principle.
So it’s very similar to a Formula racing team. And the experience of being part of that team, including understanding your role in the team, how you contribute to that team succeeding and understanding what it’s like to actually work in a team or business.
Because these Formula Student teams, certainly in the UK, are very much run like businesses because they’ve got sponsors and they’re paying for things.
You start to develop those transferable skills. You understand what it’s like to work with colleagues, what it’s like to contribute to innovation in the team for the car, you’re looking at raising money and managing budgets.
You also need to abide by regulation in terms of the competition. So you’re definitely developing those transferable employability skills, which you can take into industry. So I think that’s the most value that anyone can get who gets involved in Formula Student Africa.
Partnerships and sponsorships are the lifeblood of any Formula Student team as well as Formula Student Africa.
These teams at universities and hopefully TVET colleges and other, I guess, higher education institutions in South Africa, they will rely quite heavily on external sponsorship and industry partners, because they need parts to build a car.
They need funding support to keep the team going to pay for whatever they need to pay for. So, it’s the lifeblood of Formula Student Africa, at least the Formula Student teams.
Again, it’s the model here, and fortunately, I guess the UK is a little bit different, I can’t necessarily speak for European competitions or competitions in the US and Australia, but certainly in the UK the universities themselves provide financial and non-financial support to the teams.
And the teams are kind of tasked with raising the balance of what they need. So they’re a little bit more fortunate here, but, it’s the lifeblood for Formula Student teams anywhere in the world.
In terms of Formula Student Africa, we absolutely also are still looking for partners and sponsors, because we want to roll out our high school education programme, we want to run competitions, conferences, we want to bring teams over and we want to take South African teams abroad.
So we absolutely need sponsors and partnerships with stakeholders to help us execute on the vision of Formula Student Africa.
Up until now, we’ve funded whatever we can out of our own pockets, and our pockets are not very deep. So any industry partnerships and sponsorships will be much appreciated, not just for Formula Student Africa, the entity, but absolutely for the Formula Student teams that currently exist out there in South Africa.
I think it’s all about talent pipeline. What industry will start to realise is that any student that is involved with a Formula Student team is developing the required appropriate employability skills to enter certainly the automotive industry.
But when it comes to renewable energy sectors, our focus through Formula Student Africa is that the cars be built at some point as electric vehicles.
So there’ll be lot of education and advocacy opportunities around that, and students becoming more aware of what they need to know about renewable energy electrification.
So, being involved with the Formula Student team creates a pipeline for the automotive and renewable energy sectors.
The vision for the competition is to have a fully-fledged Formula Student competition. What that includes is a student team presenting their car at the competition.
It goes through scrutineering, so they look at the design of the car, they look at the engineering behind the car, and it also looks at the non-technical side of the team.
Those responsible for business planning and sponsorship, they need to present a business plan on are they going to sustain the team.
Having a fully-fledged four-ministerial competition in South Africa and on the African continent is very much what we would like to achieve.
In terms of expansion, obviously being from South Africa, this is where the first competition will take place. And then in terms of rolling out into Africa which country has an appetite for having this initiative in their country.
So that’s the rollout plan I guess, but first and foremost it’s about securing sponsorships and partners for us to actually be able to achieve that. And that’s what we will continue embarking on. That’s the plan.
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