Oprah Winfrey announced Wednesday she is closing the residential campus of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, ending a nearly 20-year chapter to focus instead on an expanded scholarship program.
The academy, located in Henley on Klip in Gauteng Province, will end operations in its current form at the close of the 2027 academic year, according to a statement from Winfrey. The provincial government’s Gauteng Department of Education will then take over the facility and continue running it as a school, per the terms of the academy’s original partnership agreement.
“The dream was never simply to build a school. It was to invest in the limitless potential of young women,” Winfrey, 72, said in the statement.
The academy will graduate two more classes of students before the transition takes place. Any remaining students who haven’t completed their education by then will be placed in other top-tier schools, with Winfrey covering their tuition in full through graduation, according to a representative for Winfrey.
In place of the campus, Winfrey plans to launch an expanded scholarship program aimed at reaching more girls across South Africa than a single school could serve. A representative said the new model will ultimately allow “double the amount of girls” to access education — what the rep called “the core of the decision” to shift course after two decades of results from the academy.
Winfrey opened the school in January 2007 after a six-year effort and a reported $40 million investment, building a 22-acre campus with science and computer labs, a library and a wellness center for academically talented girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. More than 1,000 girls have graduated since. Winfrey has said she personally invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the institution over its lifetime.
Winfrey framed the coming change as a continuation of her mission rather than an ending. “It doesn’t end with one campus. It continues in every girl whose future can be transformed through education,” she said. “I’m excited that this next chapter will allow us to reach even more young women across South Africa and continue the promise that began more than 20 years ago.”
