There are many forms of leadership in Africa, ranging from family heads, to chief executive officers to political leaders.
The politicians are the most important of these. This is because their decisions impact either positively or negatively on everything in society.
The great German poet and philosopher, Bertolt Brecht, once asserted: “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate…He doesn’t know that the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of medicine, all depend on political decisions.”
The Western media has in the recent past been awash with stories on how the African continent is rising or is the next best thing. The numerous conferences and forums have been organized to that effect and even leading newspapers and magazines like The Economist and Time Magazine have carried similar headlines.
However, the real truth is that there is actually a huge gulf between this ‘Africa rising’ narrative and the reality on ground; and this is because there is a leadership vacuum.
This makes that narrative a case of papering over the cracks. The leadership debacle is, however, not unique to Africa alone. In its survey, the World Economic Forum noted a few years back that there is a leadership deficit world over and that citizens had increasingly lost trust in their leadership in the aftermath of the world economic crisis.
I think Brexit and the election of many right wing politicians in the West is a pointer in this regard. Africa in particular is short of responsible and honest leaders in the mould of Lee Kuan Yew or even our own Nelson Mandela who have the mettle to deliver us to where we should be.
At the heart of Africa’s leadership crisis is a shortage or a lack of a serious institutional framework. When a country has strong institutions, the difference that one leader can make is limited; when it does not have, one leader can make or break a country. This makes leaders in Africa matter more immensely than they do in the developed world.
In Africa, governments and leaders are expected by their subjects to provide security and safety, rule of law, political space, sustainable economic prospects and a measure of human development in terms of educational and health opportunities and services. In such situations, the legislature is subordinate to the executive, the media is barely free and the judiciary is not independent.
This, in turn, brings about personality cults or what the late sagacious Professor Mazrui termed as “Hero Worship”, which is also known in today’s political jargon as “The Big-Man Syndrome”. This malaise translates into patronage and a handout culture that eventually leads to corruption, dictatorship and a desire to overstay in power beyond a leader’s welcome.
This, of course, replaces the leader’s original mandate which is service delivery to his people. As Ikem Osadi remarked in Chinua Achebe’s novel Anthills of the Savannah, ‘worshipping a dictator is such a pain in the ass’.
We have had cases of African leaders putting their faces on the national currency, referring to themselves as ‘messiahs’, had songs sung about them, constructing monuments of themselves in city centres, among others. The words of Nelson Mandela are perhaps lost on them: “I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.”
It is because of this lack of an institutional and policy framework that Africa cannot fully explore its potential and exploit the opportunities that are presented to it. For instance, under the Cotonou Agreement, African countries were given an opportunity to export goods duty-free to the European market; African countries failed to take advantage of that.
Africa is in dire straits, we are lagging behind the rest of the world but, thankfully, not all hope is lost; good leadership can be taught.
Institutions like Uongozi Institute and others like the African Leadership Academy have taken up the challenge and are teaching honest and credible leadership among the young people of Africa. This is in line with what Nelson Mandela once said: “Every generation now and then is called upon to be great.
You can be that generation.”
ojakolallan@gmail.com
The author is a lawyer.