Africa: The leaders we need

Africa: The leaders we need

Just any leader won’t solve Africa’s problems. The leaders that the continent needs are people who understand its problems and will sincerely employ leadership to solve them. The leader and his turf must match. Thus, who is good for Europe may not be so good for Africa.

In my last column, I stressed the dearth of leaders in Africa and argued that the acute shortage is responsible for the continent’s unmitigated misery. I stated that if Africa were furnished with competent leaders, the continent would leap from the depth of despair to the apex of affluence.

Now, granted Africa’s need for leaders, we should characterise the type of leaders that the continent needs. Just any leader won’t solve Africa’s problems. The leaders that the continent needs are people who understand its problems and will sincerely employ leadership to solve them. For leadership is contextual activity; its rules and principles are context-sensitive such that a leader moved from one place to another may not find his bearing on arrival unless he can adjust and fit in.

Leadership, however, has been construed in universal terms. Many scholarly writings on the subject ring with the misleading tone that suggests that a leader will perform effectively in any organisation and at any level of leadership regardless of the context or situation so long as the leader possesses the general leadership qualities and glittering track record. Often, distinction isn’t made between operational contexts of leadership especially in terms of effectiveness or ability to deliver.

I admit there are universals of leadership. But the application of leadership principles and the utilisation of leadership qualities and styles depend on the distinctives of the turf where the leader is called to play. The leader and his turf must match. Thus, who is good for Europe may not be so good for Africa.

So what type of leaders does Africa need? Answer: leaders who understand Africa’s problems and can apply their personal attributes and professional skills to solve them. They don’t have to be black, home-grown, anti-Western radicals. Human problems don’t respond to sheer ethnic and colour bars. Africa’s leaders are people who can make leadership lock on to the continent’s aches and cure them all. Specifically, the leader Africa needs should have the following skills and attributes.

* Visionary. Africa needs dreamers to lead it now – men and women with success mentality; who are dissatisfied with the status quo and averse to norm; men and women who could conceive, characterise and commence the process of change and lead the people into new experience. Africa doesn’t need leaders with low sensitivity to people’s distress. It needs leaders who won’t offer vindictive neo-colonial explanation for the continent’s woes; but will through faith and insight conceive of a picture of a developed Africa and wisely employ the continent’s resources to realise the vision.

Without visionary leaders, the next decade will witness further deepening of Africa’s poverty and decay of its vital institutions. According to Mary Knoll, a non-profit organisation, 33% of Africa’s 53 independent countries are on the list of the least developed nations in the world; 70% of its population survives on less than $2 a day; while disease and famine kill millions of the people each year.

These are challenges that require visions to tackle. They don’t call for expert mourners who are skilled in scripting elegiac apologetics bewailing why we are so poor, passing the buck and begging the world to help out. No, Africa doesn’t need philosophers to rationalise her impregnable bunker of underdevelopment. It needs visionaries who could craft a vision of all-round progress, tap into the continent’s incredible natural wealth and engage its resilient people to birth a new continent. Without such visionary leaders Africa may never rise.

* Integrity. Integrity relates to being above-board, blameless, honest and morally upright. It is an indispensable attribute that gives effective leadership the cutting edge. Lack of integrity is a major problem in African leadership. At least two African countries are listed among 10 of the world’s most corrupt nations. Corruption looms around many an organisation in Africa. Therefore, the leader who will turn Africa around must be above board and beyond reproach.

It sounds so simple; but in practice integrity in Africa is a hard game that calls for strong determination and self-sacrifice to play. For integrity is a piteous victim of the scourge of poverty and years of despotic rule in Africa. Many past and present rulers flaunt ill-gotten wealth and institutionalise graft by using money to buy support, suppress opposition and put national ethos to sleep.

In some African nations, the sheep exist for the shepherd’s table and are led to the slaughter dazed and dumb. So the man or woman who will turn the tide in an African nation requires moral compass of higher sensitivity than that of a leader in another continent where official corruption is low or rare.

* Judgement. Africa needs leaders who possess functioning critical faculty, discernment and good sense. It takes judgement to decide for one thing out of many attractive options. For lack of judgement, African nations and organisations went on a
borrowing spree and launched themselves into a debt orbit. Today, Africa remains the world’s greatest debtor with the least foreign investment. For lack of judgement, African nations failed to save for the rainy day, deserted the farms for the money market, put money on projects with bottomless socks and now pay with famine, poverty, disease and public forlorn.

* Track record. The leaders that can pull Africa out of stagnation are people who have had a clear record of leading people and organisations effectively. Barring a few exceptions, experience counts in leadership appointments in African organisations. In politics, however, track record seems to hold limited relevance. Sometimes bullets not ballots determine who rules. Or businessmen with questionable success and wealth manipulate elections and assume power or enthrone puppets. Results: leaders assume office confused, not knowing exactly what to do.

* People Skills. The leadership expert and scholar, Warren Bennis, describes this as the ability to communicate, motivate and delegate. The African leadership scene, however, would demand the inclusion of leaders’ involvement and interaction with the people in the operational definition of people skills.

Leadership in Africa isn’t short of ability to communicate, motivate and delegate. The continent has many Ciceros. So, if persuasion leads to motivation, then
African leaders shouldn’t have much problem
making the people buy into their vision.

Delegation, too, isn’t a problem in Africa but the excess of it.

As regards people skills, the leaders that Africa needs are people who don’t dwell in the cocoon of power, but are out in the trenches with the people striving together against the forces of inertia. Africa needs leaders who will identify with the plight of its people and share their reproach. Such leaders won’t live in a glass house while the majority of the people live in grimy huts. Such leaders can’t be the banker’s friends while the continent is broke and poverty fills the land from coast to coast.

I suspect Africans want to look at their leader and see their image in him. Then, they can line up behind him and together work to move the continent forward. Africa has had enough of the unhelpful dose of detached leadership. The top-down command-and-control style has fostered disenchantment, dulled motivation and unleashed public apathy. It’s time for a participative leadership style.

* Taste. Talents abound in Africa; but unfortunately they lie hidden from view until they emigrate to Europe and start making waves there. Brain drain, the loss of knowledge workers to other continents, occurs because we don’t seek and appreciate the talented here. Taste, according to Warren Bennis, is the ability to identify and cultivate talent; and Africa needs leaders who have this ability. Leaders, who love, not dread, talents and will bring them on board. Leadership isn’t one man’s efforts.

So, the men and women who will “save” Africa are those who will share leadership among knowledgeable people down the hierarchical lines; men who will let authority flow through the major veins of the continent’s existence.

In the words of Frances Hesselbein, chairman of the board of governors of the Leader to Leader Institute, USA: “We need leaders who practise dispersed leadership… so that we are relying not on the leader but on leaders dispersed across the organisation…” That’s a faster and surer way of engaging the people in the task of building a new Africa.

* Trust. Africa needs leaders that the people can trust. Trust is a function of the leader’s character and track record. Having watched their leader over a period of time, the people should be able to say: “Yes, we know what he will do, what he may do, what he can do, and how he will do it.”

Trust is built on truth; and leaders who give a sincere assessment of themselves earn the trust of their followers. Said Warren Bennis: “If we are truthful about our shortcomings, or acknowledge that we do not have all the answers, we earn the understanding and respect of others.” The wages of trust in leadership are loyalty and faith.

Whosoever has these qualities can step out and tell Africa: “Follow me”. He or she is the leader we need.

W.F. Kumuyi