As the Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation tells it, in 2002 she told former South African President Nelson Mandela that she would build a school for girls in his country, and she did. It has educated more than 1,000 young women since then. Most of us have made a big promise and then let it slip. Oprah Winfrey did the opposite.
Under the academy’s original partnership agreement, the campus will be returned to the Gauteng Department of Education. This story is a nudge for anyone who has ever procrastinated on something important. The academy announced in July 2026 that its boarding school would close at the end of the 2027 academic year.
Current students will move to other top-tier schools, with their tuition paid in full by Winfrey through graduation, according to a representative for Winfrey. Winfrey has said the next chapter will allow the work to reach more young women across South Africa, including through an expanded national scholarship program for academically gifted girls. The academy also said it will continue to stay in touch with its alumnae through mentorship and support for higher education.
Mandela wasted no time springing into action to help make that day come sooner, and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened in 2007, just five years after her initial promise. The academy now reports more than 1,000 graduates, and earlier foundation figures put the share going on to college at 90 percent. By comparison, only 20% of students in South Africa go to college, though the two figures are not directly comparable. In 2020, alumnae created a network of 300 people and partnered with nine nonprofits for COVID-19 relief work in South Africa.
Those numbers are from the school’s own supporters, so treat them as reported results, not an outside audit. The plan began during a stay at Mandela’s home. Born into poverty in the Jim Crow South, Winfrey put her goal in simple terms: “I wanted to build a school for girls like me. Alumnae have gone on to schools such as Spelman, Oxford, and Stanford’s medical school. Graduates have pursued further studies at top universities in South Africa, the United States, and Europe . The numbers also do not show how many graduates finished their degrees or the jobs they got. But they suggest that real doors were opened for these girls.
The foundation says the two were talking about how to fight poverty when Winfrey shared her belief that education levels the playing field. She also said she wanted to someday build a school for girls in the country.
