- What African Need

What Africa needs for its redemption is servant leadership instead of the self-serving governance that the continent is famed for. Our leaders should add the servanthood attitude to their attributes and demonstrate that their primary motivation for seeking to lead the people is rooted in a deep desire to serve and help out.

Africa needs new leadership. The mode of leadership by which most of the countries on the continent have been run since independence lacks remedial capacity because it isn’t development compliant. African leadership lacks the radicalising edge. I know some African nationalists might oppose this opinion alleging pandering to the well-worn Western view that attributes Africa’s poverty to poor leadership. That is part of the problem.

We cop out of paying the painful price of Africa’s rebirth, reconstruction and development by blaming colonisation for Africa’s woes. Yet, no amount of anti-Western bashing for colonialism can heal Africa of inertia. It might take the flare off the nationalists’ temper and give the false feeling of relief. But Africa won’t be freed from the crushing grips of poverty and stagnation by our raving and ranting with anti-Western scapegoat mentality.

Yes, I admit colonialism devastated Africa. By cunning and coercion, Europe took over Africa bit by bit and fleeced the continent to feed and fund its own. It’s a historical fact that Europe was once fortified by the nutrients of African soil and the sweat of its people.

The West redrew the boundaries of African nation-states and kingdoms, creating disproportionate amalgams for easy colonial administration. In the process, differing people with dissimilar cultures were un-equally yoked together. Consequently, some African nations have had to spill much blood fighting many civil and inter-ethnic wars to preserve the monolithic structures the West created out of naturally dissimilar blocks of cultures and peoples. Thus, politically, colonialism has put some African nations in a constant state of flux.

I equally admit that though colonialism is dead in Africa, the West is still at the helm in most parts of the continent. Apart from the mechanisms of neo-colonialism that help the West rule Africa by proxy, Europe is in charge of the world’s economy through globalisation. A result of creative endeavours of the West, globalisation removes trade barriers and throws the world’s markets open to all buyers and sellers. Nations that buy less but sell more, gain. Those that buy more but sell less, lose.

Globalisation hasn’t paid off well in Africa because its design concedes much advantage to Europe and industrialised Asia. Presently, Africa is a “loser” in the world’s free markets. Oduor Orgwen of Seatini Kenya has noted that Africa extracts and exports primary commodities and imports and consumes value-added products. Thus, as regards global free trade, Africa is a consumer of what it doesn’t produce and a producer of what it doesn’t consume.

Nor has globalisation attracted investors from the North to Africa as it has done to South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia; and the balance of trade between the South and North is mostly in the latter’s favour. Even capital flows which has been the only noticeable economic change that Africa appears to have reaped from globalisation, has created money markets steeped in speculative buying.

Besides, African countries lack the control instruments needed to tame the high rate in fiscal industry. In all, as has been noted by UNCTAD’S Yilmaz Akyui: “The gains from liberalisation has mainly proceeded in high skill intensive manufactures, financial and service sectors, where the developed countries have a comparative advantage”. Thus, the inherited incapacitations of colonialism and the impact of Western-influenced post-colonial creations don’t make all-round development in Africa smooth to plan and implement.

Yet, it’s in such an uneasy situation that the relevance of leadership is proved. Instead of heaping maledictions on the West for Africa’s misery and assuaging people’s thirst for change with delectable elegy, why can’t we fall back on leadership to help turn the tide? By blaming the system, we unwittingly give inept leaders a cheap alibi to justify their flaws, failures and fouls.

The characterisation of African leadership in Western literature is disquietingly sad. While some of the writers might appear too harsh in their portrayals, the conclusions of virtually all the writers can hardly be faulted. Robert I. Rotberge, the president of the World Peace Forum, in his emotional article, “The Roots of Africa’s Leadership Deficit”, gave a dismal but factual summary of African leadership performances. “During the past three decades,” Rotberge wrote, “roughly 90% of sub-Saharan African leaders have behaved despotically, governed poorly, eliminated their people’s human and civil rights, initiated or exacerbated existing civil conflicts, decelerated per capital economic growth, and proved corrupt”.

Now, check the records and see if they invalidate Rotberg’s verdict. It’s crooked thinking to blame the system for such demonising characterisation. Performance records of some African leaders will render such line of thought unacceptable. Botswana’s Seretse Khama who led his nation to independence displayed purposeful, visionary and selfless leadership that helped launch Botswana unto the path of economic growth and political stability. Khama’s legacy marks Botswana out as a flourishing nation that Rotberge described as a “paragon of leadership excellence in Africa”.

Mauritius’ Sir Seewoosagor Ramgoolam who ruled his nation for eight years (1968-1976) laid the foundations of economic progress and political harmony in his 1.2 million multi-racial island. The peace and prosperity of Mauritius today, are a function of good leadership beginning with Ramgoolam. Nelson Mandela was another effective leader in Africa. His tactically inclusive leadership helped suppress post-apartheid misapprehension and forged new climate for racial harmony and majority rule in volatile South Africa. The flashes of progress and reform in Kufuor’s Ghana, Johnson-Sirleaf’s Liberia, Yar’adua’s Nigeria, Guebuza’s Mozambique and Kibaki’s Kenya are equally remarkable. Another bright star is former President Albert René who turned a resource-poor Seychelles into the thriving island-nation of today.

The bright performances of these outstanding African leaders put a lie to the impression that Africans are incapable of evolving effective self-government, and in want of knowledge and inspiration needed to design, develop and implement visions using indigenous resources and native wisdom. But why are other African nations not so blessed with outstanding, pragmatic human change machines? Why is African leadership in general a housing of despotic, thieving bosses who are poor at visioning and bereft of knowledge?

Reason: Many African leaders are politicians who see governance as a business venture, invest their money and time in it, and exact huge returns. Such transactional self-serving capitalist leadership triggers despotism, kleptomania and official corruption.

Where all this operates, the sheep’s survival and welfare aren’t the leader’s pre-occupation. The official concern would be focused on how to fleece the flock for the shepherd’s coat and flake and fry them for the master’s table. That’s why some African leaders would rather suppress the opposition and oppress the citizenry in order to ensure that they milk the sheep for their morning tea and get spiced steaks of mutton for their family’s supper. So long as the leader’s present and future welfare is fed and funded by state funds, the nation may sail on the economic sea with tempestuous winds of IMF, the servitude rudder of the Paris Club, and the faulty compass of alien ideology.

But political leadership is about serving to secure and promote people’s welfare, their collective ethos and positive aspects of their socio-cultural norm. Leaders in the mould of Khama, René, Ramgoolam and Mandela understand this purpose and devote their energy and their cabinet’s synergy to achieve it. Africa’s disfiguring examples of leadership miss this point. So they fail to take their nations to higher levels of real peace, security and prosperity. True development is a myth where the leader’s idea of leadership is flawed.

Apparently, what Africa needs for its redemption is servant leadership instead of the self-serving governance that the continent is famed for. The leaders should add the servanthood attitude to their leadership attributes and demonstrate to their nations that their primary motivation for seeking to lead the people is rooted in a deep desire to serve and help out.
To be a servant-leader, the African must reject the concept of leadership as a money-spinning business venture; or a rare opportunity to feather one’s nest and bequeath material security to one’s offspring. He must repent of past misdeeds, adopt transparency and make appropriate restitutions.

To practise servant leadership, Africa’s politicians seeking to rule must study the nitty-gritty of this leadership mode and inject its principles into their personality and politicking. No leadership style succeeds in creating enabling environment for corporate trust and a fertile nursery for viable seeds of all-round growth like servant leadership.

The distinctive mode of this leadership and its dynamics will form the subject of our next discourse.

Dear Presidents Around the World