171

Africa’s Leadership
Conundrum
Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu

When the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced in February 2017

that there was no winner of the Foundation’s 2016 Ibrahim Prize for
Achievement in African Leadership, the news had a familiar ring to it.
Since the annual Prize for outstanding leadership by a former African head
of government was established in 2006
by the wealthy Sudanese-born busi-
nessman Mohammed Ibrahim, it has Despite the mantra of
been awarded only four times. “Africa Rising” that took
Despite the mantra of “Africa hold over the past decade
Rising” that took hold over the past
to date, there is no denying
decade to date, there is no denying
that African countries, with few excep- that African countries,
tions, have been afflicted by a crisis of with few exceptions, have
leadership. That crisis has progressively been afflicted by a crisis of
become more acute after the era of leadership.
decolonization in the 1950s and 60s
when the political struggle to break the
yoke of Western colonial oppression focused minds and threw up an abun-
dance of leadership talent. Today, a quarter century after the end of the
Cold War, and with a vast majority of Africa’s countries officially democ-
racies, the continent’s elected and unelected leaders have largely proved

Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu is Professor of Practice in International Business and

Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the
Founder of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation, and previously
served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009-2014. Professor
Moghalu is the author of several books including Emerging Africa: How the Global
Economy’s ‘Last Frontier’ Can Prosper and Matter and the forthcoming Economic Man:
Nigeria and the Wealth of Nations. He is a frequent commentator in the global media
including CNN, BBC World TV, Bloomberg, and The Financial Times.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

172 the fletcher forum of world affairs

unable to achieve high standards of governance as an outcome of leader-

ship, and economic transformation as an outcome of effective governance.
And yet, the continent unquestionably abounds with leadership
talent. The problem is that, while effective leaders are plenty in the realms
of entrepreneurship, the professions, and civil society in Africa, transfor-
mational leadership ability has yet to become dominant in the cohort of
political leadership, which is the focus of this essay.

THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

Addressing Africa’s leadership challenge successfully will require accu-

rate insight into the roots of the conundrum the continent appears to face
today—one in which its countries remain relatively poor, economically
and technologically, in a globalized world defined by competitiveness in
wealth creation rather than the strategic imperatives of world politics of a
bygone era such as the Cold War. In that era, these imperatives defined the
influence and relevance of several nations beyond their economic wealth.
This was the world in which Africa came of age. But the leadership African
countries need today is one that can stabilize, develop, and modernize them
economically and technologically in order to improve the living standards
of their citizens and become more competitive in a global context.
Against this backdrop, the root cause of Africa’s leadership conun-
drum lies in sub-optimal understandings, and thus applications, of the
meaning of leadership. A leader leads based on how he/she understands
leadership. There are historical, cultural, sociological, and philosophical
dimensions of this reality. Leadership, to begin with, must be defined in
connection with achievement and results including and going beyond a
process of governance. Leadership, therefore, means the ability to set out
a vision of a desired state of things, set priorities, take risks, and mobilize
society toward achieving such a desired end state.

The Historical Context

The definition and understanding of leadership may be quite different

from what African countries today require of their leaders. Thus, although
the word “leadership” is now in vogue, many African countries still have
“rulers” rather than leaders. It does not matter that many of these countries
may be democracies in a formalistic sense. As one practical example, the
main priority of heads of state and government in Africa in the 1970s and
the 1980s was to obtain political power for its own sake—mainly through

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 173

coups d’état—and to keep it for as long as possible. Development of strong

institutions—an important instrument of effective leadership—was not
seen as a priority. We can identify three cultural “understandings” that lie
at the root of African leadership styles.

The Cultural Context

“Us versus Them”

This is the problem of ethnic, religious, or other atomistic-identity

based factionalism that defines the acquisition or exercise of political power
in African countries. It is present even in mature democracies and econom-
ically advanced countries such as the United States, Belgium, and Spain.
Yet, because these countries have already achieved advanced economic
progress, this is simply an imperfection or a characteristic in their democ-
racies. In Africa, it is a foundational problem that has prevented the devel-
opment of exceptional leadership.
Many African countries remain internally divided by ethnic and reli-
gious identities in their populations. The effect of these divisions on leadership
selection and practice is that contests for political power in democracies on
the continent are based not on ideology or clearly articulated leadership goals,
but are in reality contests for ethnic or religious dominance. Political power
obtained on this basis can hardly be exercised as transformational leadership.
This breeds a “governance” culture of patronage based on divisive identities.

Authority versus Service

In many African pre-colonial cultures, the power of traditional

kings was absolute. This cultural reality has not adapted well to concepts
of modern statehood, democracy, and the checks and balances offered by
the separation of executive, judicial, and legislative power on the conti-
nent. Political leadership is thus often perceived in African countries more
as authority than service, as raw power rather than responsibility. Being
(in which achievement is identified as the position of privilege attained or
occupied) is thus far more important than doing (results from leadership)
and is often conflated with leadership. In this context, electoral account-
ability for the performance of leadership is often weak. This cultural reality,
however, is beginning to change in a gradual but irreversible direction
as democratic practice matures toward substance rather than the mere
formality of holding elections.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

174 the fletcher forum of world affairs

This authority versus service conundrum is also reflected in a prevalent

culture of sycophancy in political leadership. Few aides or government offi-
cials can provide independent-minded and objective advice to a superior
at any level of authority and leadership. This culture of prioritizing a place
in the good graces of a leader’s ego over actual work performance creates a
strong incentive for leadership failure. (“L’etat c’est moi” (“I am the State”),
as the French King Louis XIV famously stated. Many African presidents in
the 21st century, elected or not, have this mindset.)

Loyalty versus Competence

Loyalty is admittedly a characteristic that leaders everywhere, in both

developed and developing countries, treasure. But the difference between
good and bad governance is the context in which loyalty is demanded or
displayed. Because leadership in Africa is based more on the authority
syndrome than on the concept of accountable public service and was
often insecure because of unconstitutional changes of government, African
political leaders place a high premium on personal loyalty above all else
in choosing their aides and in political appointments to important state
institutions. Often, personal loyalty is reified above competence because
African leaders want to feel secure in the loyalty of subordinates with whom
the leader is personally acquainted.
This approach to leadership distorts the concept, for it makes
capacity, ability, and competence secondary or even completely irrelevant
in personnel selection. The direct consequence is that few leaders of African
states are able to translate their authority into a sense of responsibility to
rack up transformational achievements. Addressing the fundamental chal-
lenge of economic development requires a clear vision that is backed up by
diffused leadership ability and technocratic competence in the cabinet and
other subordinate levels of public service.

The Sociological Context

The main sociological cause of poor leadership in Africa today is

corruption and a perversion of the social values and mores of traditional
African society. Because institutions are too weak, together with a sense of
informed entitlement to self-aggrandizement to call an African president
to account, the “Us versus Them” syndrome provides a strong incentive for
corrupt practice by many African leaders. That of power versus responsi-
bility legitimizes the practice. A “leader” who is focused on deploying the

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 175

authority of his office for self-enrichment not only provides a bad example
of leadership for the development of a leadership culture but also robs his
or her country and its citizens of public resources that could be deployed
more beneficially as a public good or investment.
Corruption is a major reason for Africa’s underdevelopment relative
to the rest of the world. The phenom-
enon lies at the core of governance
processes in several African countries The main sociological cause
instead of the periphery. This reality of poor leadership in Africa
renders governance incapable of
today is corruption and a
achieving transformational outcomes.
The payment of bribes to access public perversion of the social values
services is common in some of the and mores of traditional
continent’s largest economies such African society.
as Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya
where corruption has held back devel-
opment. Corruption is not just a foundational cause of poor leadership in
Africa; the failure of many countries afflicted by the scourge to fight it is
one of the most glaring indictments of leadership failure.

The Philosophical Context

There is a fundamental connection between mindsets, or worldviews

to use a philosophical phrase, and why a majority of African nations have
remained poor despite being “endowed” with natural resources. Although
the continent is emerging as a place of opportunity, it is not yet rising in
a real economic sense despite the illusions induced by the commodities
boom. The fundamental reason why Africa is not rising, and cannot rise
unless it addresses this deficit, is that the countries of the continent are not
driven by any discernible worldview.
Developing and inculcating a worldview is the ultimate task of polit-
ical leadership. A worldview is a reflection of the inner world of the mind of
an individual or a society and how this relates to the world around us. We
project in our outward actions (or inactions) what is produced in our minds
by this interaction. In turn, this influences our environment by creating
certain realities. The immediate consequence of a conscious societal world-
view is a well thought out strategy, with timeframes, a system of organi-
zation to achieve progress, and a value system that underpins this quest.
The consequence of its absence is an inability to perceive trends and events
accurately, low-level ambitions such as mere “survival,” atomistic-identity

vol.41:2 summer 2017

176 the fletcher forum of world affairs

thinking that prioritizes the interests of a few rather than the many, and the
resulting aimless drift.
Chu Okongwu, a former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning
in Nigeria, writing on the importance of the worldview dimension of the
leadership deficit in Africa, emphasized this link between leadership and
worldviews, and the worldview responsibility of leadership:
Everyone, of course, has a worldview—some cohering [filtering,
interpretive] view of the world [universe] and its jumble of events.
However, important as these may be, we speak not of them. Rather,
we refer to the admissible and ennobling “system worldview” of
the helmsman [no gender bias] or optimal controller: his view of
the place and role of his society in the global system. This includes
correct perception, even if only in outlines, of present and probable
future challenges and opportunity niches for the society…
The sound helmsman well understands that, no matter how valorous
and dedicated he is in the goal pursuit process, by acting alone
nothing can be achieved. Therefore, he mobilizes society to accept,
indeed appropriate, his worldview through co-education. At the
same time, he establishes solidarity with the polity by engaging in
consensus building, reinforcing a perception of shared burdens, and
continually demonstrating his commitment to the plan.
Without a worldview it would be impossible, so to speak, to estab-
lish measures of one’s location, ultimate objectives, economic-tech-
nological “distance” from other societies and performance of means;
one would be, as it were, groping in the dark; at best, one would be
essentially disoriented in the universe. In such an unfortunate case,
the helmsman would quickly lapse into localism and primordiality,
while the society, under pressure from a combination of factors such
as technological backwardness, economic regress, increasing popula-
tion but failing per capita incomes, would soon become mobilized
against itself with serious portents.1

CASE STUDIES IN LEADERSHIP IN AFRICA

Although Africa undoubtedly faces a challenge of transformational

leadership in a majority of countries, there are several leadership success
stories in the continent. We will examine some African countries and their
leadership successes and challenges as case studies based on three leadership
styles (a) authoritarian, (b) liberal, and (c) hybrid. Ethiopia and Rwanda
will be assessed under (a), Botswana under (b), while Nigeria and South
Africa will be examined under (c). The important lesson from these assess-
ments is that, with outstanding leadership defined in a transformational

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 177

outcomes context, what really matters is not so much the political or

economic model that is adopted, but the effectiveness of governance. It is
also important to understand that each approach to leadership will have
positives and negatives. Some more than others when measured from the
standpoint of outcomes.

Ethiopia

With 94 million people, Ethiopia is the second most populous country

in Africa after Nigeria. Despite its geographic peculiarity as a land-locked
country, Ethiopia has maintained an annual GDP growth rate between 8
percent and 11 percent for more than a decade. It is the fifth fastest growing
economy of the International Monetary Fund’s 188 member countries.
The economy is driven largely by agriculture, on the back of which the
country now seeks to achieve industrialization and export diversification,
and services, which is now the main driver of growth.
The remarkable thing about Ethiopia’s economic growth is that
the country, unlike many others in the continent, is consciously strong,
achieving inclusive growth, and avoiding the related trap of income
inequality. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, “Ethiopia has the
lowest rate of income inequality in Africa and one of the lowest in the world,
with a Gini coefficient comparable to that of the Scandinavian countries.”2
Poverty nevertheless remains a major problem, but Ethiopia is
pursuing a growth strategy that will likely see it emerge as one of Africa’s first
truly globally competitive economies outside South Africa. This strategy
is based on a five-year Growth and Transformation Plan that is focused
on achieving industrialization and expert diversification based on areas of
comparative advantage, such as textiles and garments; leather goods such
as shoes; and processed agricultural products.
These achievements are proceeding against the background of a most
unconventional set of facts. Ethiopia runs a one-party political system and
has a planned economy. As noted earlier, it is a land-locked country with
rugged and difficult terrain. The country has also shunned the orthodoxies
of western-inspired political and economic liberation. The government
has microcredit industries for domestic investors, and foreign investment
is pouring into Ethiopia’s textiles, leather, commercial agriculture, light
manufacturing, and tourism sectors.
Exceptional leadership is evidently at play. The components of that
exceptionality include that most necessary ingredient of a foundational
worldview anchored in an ancient history that dates back three million

vol.41:2 summer 2017

178 the fletcher forum of world affairs

years: Ethiopia has never been colonized. That worldview is one deter-
mined to succeed in a globalized world on its own terms. This perspective
is backed up by a clear strategy and the discipline of execution, a strategic
relationship with China that is yielding real benefits to the rare African
country that knows exactly what it wants out of the relationship.3 It has
imbibed a focus on developing light manufacturing by positioning Ethiopia
as a hub for economic activity for companies shifting away from China as
a manufacturing base due to increasingly high wages in Asia. The country
is investing heavily in acquiring and developing the skilled labor that will
underpin this growth strategy.
The path to Ethiopia’s contemporary success was set by Meles Zenawi,
the country’s prime minister from 1995 until his death in 2012, and the
head of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, the ruling
political party, since its formation in 1991. Meles was a visionary leader
who combined political sagacity with a brilliant technocratic mind—a
rare feature in Africa’s leadership landscape. He purposefully set out to put
Ethiopia on the path of transformation from its previous image as a back-
water famous for famines and starvation in the 1980s to a developed and
industrialized country, and championed the concept of the “developmental
state” as a model on which an African Renaissance can be built.
Zenawi’s legacy, however, remains controversial, and Ethiopia
remains challenged by a specter of repression and human rights abuses.
Clearly, a liberal society with freedoms of speech, association, and political
orientation the East African country is not. One critical commentator on
Zenawi’s legacy argued that Zenawi was a paradoxical figure who embodied
the traits of a brutal dictator and a politico-economic genius.4
It is striking that, rare for an African leader, Zenawi, in death as in
his life, has retained the deep respect and admiration of several of his fellow
leaders on the continent. His achievements and those of the even-keeled and
less flamboyant Mr. Hailemariam Desalegn (Zenawi’s Deputy Prime Minister
and successor) are hard to ignore, but there can be no denying the challenge
posed by ethnic tensions that led to widespread protests by the marginal-
ized Oromo ethnic groups which constitute a third of Ethiopia’s population,
leading to the declaration of a state of emergency in the Oromia region.
The tensions could destabilize Ethiopia’s growth trajectory if they
are not well managed. Prime Minister Desalegn will likely superintend a
gradual, controlled liberalization of Ethiopia’s economy in the years ahead.5
How successfully he can do this, while maintaining the cohesiveness of
the Ethiopian State and its admirable economic trajectory, is the country’s
leadership challenge.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 179

Rwanda

Two decades ago, the East African nation of Rwanda was world-
famous for one reason: genocide. Today, Rwanda has achieved continental
and global recognition for other reasons: the country has the second highest
“ease of doing business” ranking in Africa after Mauritius, according to the
World Bank, and it takes only two procedures and three days to open a
business in Rwanda. The country is positioned to become an African infor-
mation technology hub, and over one million Rwandans have been pulled
out of poverty over the past decade. Rwanda is the toast of foreign inves-
tors such as Starbucks, Visa Inc., and other corporations, and is targeting
inflows of $1.5 billion a year in foreign direct investment.6
Kigali, the capital city, is the cleanest in the continent—thanks to the
orderly efficiency of Rwandan society and in part to the fact that, in order
to prevent environmental degradation, one cannot enter the country with
a plastic bag. Modern skyscrapers increasingly dot the Kigali skyline, and
the country is clearly open for business.
Ethnic identification by Rwandans is banned. A strong effort to unify
the country around the idea of Rwanda rather than ethnicity is on, with
Tutsi genocide survivors living side by side with Hutus after international
and local gacaca trials rendered justice to mass killers in the late 1990s
and early 2000s. English, rather than the prior French, is now the coun-
try’s official language, in a strategic break away from historical ties with
Belgium and France, and unpleasant controversies over the roles of these
two nations in the Rwandan civil war and genocide.
Rwanda today is largely the product one man’s vision and grit, a
so-far successful but still fragile experiment at transformational leadership
in Africa out of the ashes of conflict and poverty. If the country is “Rwanda,
Inc.,” Paul Kagame is its Chief Executive Officer, and he is committed to
a “pro-poor” model of economic growth that prioritizes eradicating rural
poverty based on a national Vision 2020 that is being implemented on
target.7 That Kagame has delivered returns to his country-corporation,
and therefore is domestically popular, is beyond dispute, and he is eagerly
observed as a leadership case study on the continent.
Kagame’s leadership secret lies in his vision, iron discipline, pragma-
tism, and hands-on project management style that enables him to break
down big projects into discrete chunks that must be delivered within clear
timelines. He has proven astute at communicating his vision for Rwanda
to the average citizen and mobilizing their participation in nation-building

vol.41:2 summer 2017

180 the fletcher forum of world affairs

through effective top-down organization, from the presidency down to the

village cells in each rural area in the most remote parts of the country.
Rwanda’s leader is a mixture of a technocrat and policy wonk, and
a hands-on CEO-leader-manager that obsesses about performance targets
and results. His emphasis on performance, which he monitors with signed
formal goals—imihigo—that are akin to corporate performance contracts,8
means that subordinates have little room for laxity. Non-performing offi-
cials are quickly relieved of their positions in Rwanda.
In the area of private sector-led economic development, Kagame
encourages a liberal approach with a strong role for private sector leadership
but still under the state’s guiding hand. Nevertheless, in a unique play on
state capitalism that is typically Kagame-esque in its originality, Rwanda’s
ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), has controlling interests
in certain business corporations, referred to as “party-statals” (a play on
the more traditional state-owned parastatals). These business corporations,
dominated by three investment companies—Crystal Ventures, Horizon
Group, and Rwanda Investment Group—have been the subject of raised
eyebrows in relation to their role vis-à-vis market asymmetry and corporate
governance transparency.9
Rwanda may be the only African country in which the dominant
political party directly owns and runs businesses. This has important impli-
cations for the evolution of private sector development in the country,
even as Kagame is encouraging a greater degree of foreign investment in
the economy outside of these hybrid party-state owned enterprises. Here
again, it is instructive to see how Kagame has used political structures to
create wealth—even if the ownership or deployment of this created wealth
is not always clear—rather than the pure and corrupt rent-seeking and
treasury-looting by political leaders and political parties that occur in most
African countries.
Another aspect of Rwanda’s leadership, one of fundamental relevance
to Africa’s true emergence on the global economic and political stage, is
Kagame’s attitude to foreign aid, which has broadly failed to achieve much
in Africa beyond maintaining the aid-industrial complex in the Western
world and incompetent leaders in several African countries who believe,
vainly, that outside assistance is what will create prosperity for Africans.
Rwanda has benefited from large amounts of foreign aid, to the tune of $1
billion annually, and is viewed as the sub-Saharan Africa country that has
utilized aid most efficiently and effectively.10 Thus, Western governments
and bureaucrats have viewed Kagame and his Rwanda as a great example
of aid effectiveness.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 181

Yet, Kagame is contemptuous of foreign aid, which he views,

correctly, as detracting from the dignity of Africans, and has treated aid as
a necessary but transient evil. He is systematically reducing his country’s
aid dependence, encouraging a self-confident culture of entrepreneurship
in young Rwandans. Laden with bitter memories of the world’s failure
to intervene and stop the genocide of 1994 in his country, the Rwandan
leader has little faith in the aspirational contraption known as the “inter-
national community.”
While he has been adroit in exploiting the guilt of Western nations
for their failure to stop the genocide and has been described as “the global
elite’s favorite strongman,”11 Kagame’s leadership worldview is one that is
anchored on his perception of the needs of his people. That worldview
proceeds from inside outwards in a competitive context in a globalized
world and is self-confident enough not to crave the approval of the West.
At the same time, he combines Rwandan core values with the best Western-
style modern leadership and management thinking.
The Rwandan parliament recently amended the country’s constitu-
tion to allow Kagame to run for a third seven-year term in office, and after
that two further terms of five years each. Thus, Paul Kagame could be
Rwanda’s president until 2034. From an outsider’s perspective, this ought
to be a difficult judgment call for Rwanda’s citizens, one between a leader
who is providing effective and transformational leadership that is verifi-
able, but in a restricted political space and blooming political freedoms
that might yield a return to divisive, ethnocentric politics that defined the
country’s past and makes it potentially unsafe for the minority Tutsi.
This brings up the unpleasant but practically necessary question of
whether, whenever Kagame leaves office after a long period as Rwanda’s
helmsman, he will be succeeded by another Tutsi. Such a scenario, absent
Kagame’s uniqueness against the immediate historical backdrop of the
1994 genocide, will likely generate significant hostility from the majority
Hutu, who make up 85 percent of Rwandans. It could be interpreted as a
signal of a return to earlier historical trends in which the minority Tutsi-
dominated Rwandan leadership and society before the tables turned in the
Belgian-inspired Hutu “revolution” of 1959.
Kagame’s critics have noted that his official policy of “banishment”
of ethnic identification in Rwanda is really just a smokescreen for the
dominance of Tutsi who comprise the leader’s core inner circle, although
there are high-ranking Hutu, such as prime minister Anastase Murekezi,
in Kagame’s government. Thus, the “us versus them” conundrum, aided in
this case by the imperative of ethnic survival and shrouded in accusations

vol.41:2 summer 2017

182 the fletcher forum of world affairs

of a repressive political climate and poor human rights record, remains

embedded in a larger worldview of transformation that has marked
Rwanda’s post-genocide journey.

Botswana

Botswana’s success as a “developmental state” is due to the country

successfully avoiding the leadership deficit that has afflicted many African
countries. The Southern African country of 2.2 million people, the third
poorest in the world when it became independent from British colonial
rule in 1966, had achieved middle-income status in the 1990s and a per
capita GDP of $7,000 in 2015, all as a result of leadership effectiveness.
The country’s story is one of an unbroken chain of solid leadership
involving four men—Sir Seretse Khama, the country’s founding father;
Quett Masire; Festus Mogae, the Mo Ibrahim Leadership Laureate; and
Ian Khama, the current president and a son of Sir Seretse. Each, apart from
Seretse, had served as vice-president to his predecessor, which is indicative
of a conscious effort at ensuring leadership stability and orderly succession.
Three characteristics of this group helped shape the country’s leader-
ship.12 First, the Botswana elite are mainly Tswana, giving them a common
language and cultural background. Second, they were educated in the same
schools inside Botswana, in neighboring countries such as South Africa,
and further afield in the United Kingdom. Third, this shared “schoolmate”
culture exposed them to similar and wider global experiences.
Of particular importance was the leadership tone set by Sir Seretse,
a British-trained barrister who overcame much tribulation at the hands
of British colonialists to build a modern nation on a futuristic vision.
Other success factors included the absence of a dominant ethnic group in
the country; fragile economic viability at independence, which formed a
rallying point for the emergence of national leadership; and the absence of
a strong class divide between the elite and the ordinary people, united as
they were by a common engagement in livestock agriculture.13
Beyond these mainly historical factors, the more contemporary ones
of the development of a strong democratic culture and institutions, the
discovery and—rare for an African state—ultimately successful manage-
ment of diamond and its bountiful revenues, a strong focus by Botswanan
political leaders on public policy and management, and the stability of polit-
ical succession, all played important roles in the Botswanan success story.
By Sir Seretse’s death in 1980, Botswana was already well on its way to
economic success. Ian Khama, the current president, has been largely successful

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 183

at diversifying the economy into value-adding industries around diamonds,

such as diamond polishing instead of an unhealthy reliance on exports of raw
diamonds that are more susceptible to exogenous market shocks.

Nigeria

In his book The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, the globally
acclaimed Nigerian author, concluded that, “the trouble with Nigeria is
simply and squarely the failure of leadership. There is nothing basically
wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the
Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else.” Achebe wrote these
words in 1984 when Nigeria had been independent for nearly a quarter-
century. Today, three decades later, Achebe’s words still ring true with
beguiling simplicity but with profound implications for Africa’s most
populous country of 180 million people.
With rare exceptions, leadership in Nigeria—which can be found in
abundance in the private sector—has in the public sphere of politics and
governance been marked by ethno-religious chauvinism (us versus them), a
culture of megalomania (authority versus service) amongst political leaders,
massive corruption, and the enthronement of mediocrity by favoring
personal or ethnic/religious loyalty over competence (loyalty versus compe-
tence). Narrow political considerations have progressively and consistently
trumped rational economic thinking and policy in governance.
The results have been predictable: fifty-seven years after its indepen-
dence in 1960, when Nigeria was seen as a possible competitor to Japan and
was at similar or higher levels of development with South Korea, Malaysia,
and Thailand, Nigeria today is stuck in a rut, still with massive economic
potential, but with a GDP per capita of $3,000. This stands in contrast
to the aforementioned countries above with GDPs per capita of $26,000
(South Korea), $10,500 (Malaysia), and $5,775 (Thailand).
What has prevented Nigeria’s economic transformation is the lead-
ership failure of extreme dependence on the export of crude oil, which
today accounts for 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings. Despite much
rhetoric over the past 40 years, Nigeria has remained unable to diversify its
economy into a productive industrial one, although it has a rising services
sector that now makes up just over 50 percent of total GDP. This has left
Nigeria at the mercy of a volatile cycle of oil booms—which has only
created fiscal indiscipline and a social culture of easy money—and debili-
tating busts. This economic failure in the midst of such potential, together
with the combination of massive corruption with the absence of national

vol.41:2 summer 2017

184 the fletcher forum of world affairs

cohesion as a result of ethnic irredentism, is the real tragedy of Nigeria’s

leadership failure.
Although some governments in Nigeria’s contemporary historical
past had the benefit of having within their governance hierarchy compe-
tent technocrats, Nigeria’s experience with leadership and economic and
political failures demonstrate that the leadership competence and vision of
the political heads of the national and sub-national governments are what
matters most. No amount of subordinate technocratic competence can run
faster than the abilities or limitations of the ultimate political leadership.
The economic reforms and achievements in GDP growth witnessed during
the presidency of Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007 were due to a
combination of technocratic competence with a political leadership with a
clear economic vision.
Nigeria’s leadership challenge is a product of the country’s history.
The trajectory of leadership selection took a negative turn with the excur-
sion of the country’s military officers into governance through a series of
military coups, the first of which occurred in 1966, six years after indepen-
dence, and eventually snowballed into a destructive civil war from 1967
– 1970. That war was successfully fought to prevent the secession of the
country’s eastern region (the short-lived Republic of Biafra). The Nigerian
civil war also shaped the evolution of political leadership at the national
level ever since because it tilted political power away from leadership ability
and toward subjective factors such as ethnic identity as a springboard for
the quest for both military and civilian democratic power in the decades
since the war. Southeastern Nigeria and its highly educated and economi-
cally industrious Igbo ethnic group, which comprised the core of the
Biafra rebellion, have been effectively excluded from political leadership in
Nigeria ever since the civil war.
Decades of military rule, brought about by debilitating cycles of
coups d’état, briefly attenuated at first by an interregnum of democratic
rule between 1979 and 1983, in retrospect achieved essentially nothing
other than thwarting a democratic development trajectory that could
by now have achieved maturity. Democratic governance was restored in
1999 and has continued, unbroken, to date. In 2015, Nigerians elected
Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator who came to power in
a coup in December 1983 and was himself overthrown as president 20
months later in August 1985 by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Buhari’s elec-
tion was historic because he defeated an incumbent president, Goodluck
Jonathan, who graciously conceded defeat rather than risk a potentially
bloody showdown had he tried to cling to power.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 185

Two years into Buhari’s tenure, and with national elections looming
in 2019, fundamental challenges of leadership still confront Nigeria,
latterly compounded by the president’s ill health. There has been wide-
spread dissatisfaction with the slow pace of governance by Buhari, who
took six months to appoint his cabinet and lost valuable time. Criticisms
of a preponderance of his fellow Hausa-Fulani ethnic group and Muslim
co-religionists in his appointments (the “us v them” conundrum) led to
weakened trust across the ethnic and religious divides in the country.
The questionable economic management skills of his government,
combined with the venal depletion of the country’s foreign currency
savings fund by federal and state governments during the prior Jonathan
presidency, played a considerable role in plunging Nigeria into its worst
recession in 25 years. Mr. Buhari has fought corruption with gusto, elected
as he was largely on perceptions of his incorruptibility, but with mixed
success born of the absence of a sophisticated approach that is deliberate,
systemic, and holistic rather than moralistic, episodic, and theatrical—and,
with the rare exception14, targeted mainly at opposition party politicians.
There is a gap in real communication—the type practiced by Rwanda’s
Kagame—between the government and the people it governs.
The fixation of Nigeria’s political leadership class with the “us
versus them” syndrome has meant that basic reforms necessary for effec-
tive economic planning and management, such as a credible census and a
national identification scheme, have not been executed because political
leaders view these exercises through the prism of narrow, vested sectarian
interests. There is no communication of a unifying national vision to coun-
teract these fissiparous tendencies.
Nigeria clearly needs a new generation of leadership away from the
products of a bygone historical era to one better equipped to confront
the country’s contemporary economic and political challenges of inclusive
economic growth and national cohesion that is fraying at the seams. That
leadership must be one that approaches the future with a clear worldview
of the country’s place in the world and how to get there, the economic
knowledge, competence, and experience to turn Nigeria’s undoubted
potential into the reality of an economic powerhouse. That leadership
must be one with the political will to tackle necessary constitutional and
economic reforms required to take the country from the impoverishment
and instability of oil boom-bust cycles to real prosperity based on a strategy
of economic complexity and true fiscal federalism.15 The writer Achebe was
right: Nigeria needs to break its leadership jinx if it is to make real progress.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

186 the fletcher forum of world affairs

South Africa

As Africa’s most advanced economy and a member of the BRICS group

of emerging market countries, South Africa faces a crisis of leadership that
demonstrates exactly how weak leadership negatively impacts the continent’s
progress. Between 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s first
post-Apartheid president and served not just as South Africa’s leader, but as a
world leader in his own right, to the cerebral Thabo Mbeki, and to the earthy,
populist Jacob Zuma, South Africa now faces an existential leadership question.
Mandela was the gold standard of leadership, a role model for a world
universally inspired by his heroic struggle for the freedom of South Africa’s
non-white majority from racial oppression. Mandela was endowed with a
rare level of vision and translated this quality, as president of the “new South
Africa” into a rallying cry for reconciliation and unity instead of vengeance
in a nation torn by Apartheid and its bitter legacy. His leadership task was
to build the political and moral foundation of a country newly liberated
from the dark force of constitutionally sanctioned repression of the majority
of its citizens by a privileged minority. Despite the challenges of poverty
and wild— but understandable—expectations of the black majority in a
country the economy of which was built on the back of black labor for the
benefit of the white population, he largely succeeded. He declined to seek an
otherwise assured second term in office as president, and handed over to his
vice-president, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) diplomat and
intellectual Thabo Mbeki.
Mbeki provided continental leadership in Africa and championed the
idea of the Africa Renaissance, a worldview of regeneration and transforma-
tion. But he was viewed as aloof in the context of domestic politics, and some-
what disconnected from the grassroots party faithful of the ANC. Mbeki was
to be ultimately outmaneuvered, dethroned, and replaced by Jacob Zuma, a
Zulu in a political party dominated by Xhosa language speaking leaders like
his predecessors Mandela and Mbeki.
Under Zuma’s presidency since 2009, the retrogressive understandings
and characteristics of leadership that have marked several African countries’
governments have gained ascendancy, with important political and economic
consequences16. The first weakness of Zuma’s leadership was that he brought
to the leadership of an industrialized African state a personalized leadership
style that was based more on the traditional Zulu kingship culture than the
requirements of a modern state. The style and the context in which it was
deployed were severely mismatched. Zuma’s colorful private life only added
to this conundrum.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 187

Second, high-level corruption thrived under Zuma. His presidency

was de-legitimized by the scandals surrounding the illegal furnishing of
his private residence with public funds, with the country’s Constitutional
Court ordering him to refund the state for illegal expenses of state funds
on his private property.17 Corrupt cronyism has marked his leadership,
leading to official findings of “state capture” by the president’s business
associates such as the controversial Gupta family.18 Third, and directly as a
consequence of the first two hallmarks of the Zuma presidency, the South
African president consistently sought to undermine the country’s institu-
tions. His presidency has been marked by running battles with the judi-
ciary and the Public Protector, two institutions that, rare for an African
country, have not been cowed into submission to the leader’s will.
Unsurprisingly, these predilections led to tensions between Zuma
and technocratic professionalism in his cabinet that asserted independence
from his political machinations, culminating in his controversial firing
of Pravin Gordhan, South Africa’s respected Minister of Finance, in early
2017. As a result of President Zuma’s leadership crisis, the ANC, which
hitherto practically had a lock on the votes of South Africa’s black majority,
has progressively lost political support, losing heavily in the provincial elec-
tions of 2016.19
While Zuma has retained the core loyalty of some factions of the
ANC, his sacking of Gordhan galvanized broad-based protests and calls
for his resignation. Ratings agencies downgraded South Africa’s sovereign
debt to junk status, with negative implications for the country’s economy.
Whether South Africa will continue down the path of leadership retro-
gression and stasis, or return to superior standards of leadership will be
determined by Zuma’s succession, either at the end of his tenure in 2019
or a forced resignation before then should his opponents prevail. President
Zuma has clearly sought to influence the outcome of his succession in a
manner calculated to protect him in the future, out of office, from inves-
tigations and prosecutions of his numerous scandals while in office. The
outcome will also influence the trajectory of South Africa’s economy and
the ANC.

ADDRESSING AFRICA’S LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

It’s not enough to lament Africa’s leadership deficit. What should be

done about it? Although leaders in Africa have traditionally been seen as
having the responsibility to drive governance and transformation in every
case, the failure, with a handful of exceptions, of the political leaders of

vol.41:2 summer 2017

188 the fletcher forum of world affairs

African countries to create transformational outcomes that take their citi-

zens out of poverty by creating the wealth of nations invites a significant
role reversal in which citizens begin to drive the leadership agenda.
There are three important steps to be taken in addressing the lead-
ership problem, and we return to where we began—identifying the fact
that most political leaders in African problems do not understand the real
meaning of leadership and, where they might have a clue, are too self-
serving because they have not been adequately made accountable for their
failures. First, aspiring leaders in Africa must be trained and prepared to
become leaders in the public sphere.
This is the quickest way to short-circuit
Africa’s weak leadership the deep cultural problems that bedevil
culture will not change the leadership enterprise on the conti-
without an activist demand nent. Second, the electorate in African
for accountability and countries must be empowered with
leadership performance by basic economic and political educa-
tion. And third, Africa’s weak leader-
citizens and civil society. ship culture will not change without an
activist demand for accountability and
leadership performance by citizens and civil society, much like shareholders
and “activist investors” today hold the feet of CEOs and boards of modern
business corporations to the fire.

Leadership Training

Leadership training, to be effective, will require a focus on the right

things, all with an eye on creating the ability to lead with transforma-
tional impact given the “distance” between African countries and parts of
the developing world and emerging markets such as East Asia and Latin
America. This means a focus on visioning and the discipline of execution,
the formulation and effective execution of public policy. In doing so, the
well-tested and developed lessons of leadership science utilized in the global
private sector, such as the difference between leadership and management,
will need to be adapted for public service. Not everyone can or will be a
leader. Understanding what leadership gurus call the “seven transforma-
tions” or “action logics” of leadership—the opportunist, the diplomat, the
expert, the achiever, the individualist, the strategist, and the (transforma-
tional) alchemist—is necessary, coupled with how to grow in progression
through these logics, if leaders are to be assigned to or achieve roles well
matched with their capabilities.20

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 189

Innovative entrepreneurs are now filling the niche of meeting the

need for leadership training in Africa. Fred Swanicker has been an early
pioneer, starting with his high school-level African Leadership Academy
in South Africa, and the recent establishment of the African Leadership
University, which, hardly surprising, has campuses in two countries,
Rwanda and Mauritius. The Guardians of the Nations International
(GOTNI) in Nigeria is also playing a similar role focusing on preparing
leaders. These efforts will likely result in a future generation of leaders far
better equipped than the career politicians whose claim to leadership rests
largely on their longevity in public office or in loitering in the corridors of
political power.

Economic and Political Education

Low levels of education on economics and democratic political and

governance processes inhibit citizens in African countries from assessing
public policy effectively and holding political leaders accountable. This has
resulted in low standards of governance, in particular in the area of macro-
economic management. If citizens do not understand the issues of public
policy fully—even if they will know, anecdotally, whether their quality of
life is better or worse—they will not be able to ask the right questions and
interrogate public policy effectively. Providing this kind of education to
the mass of citizens should be the focused objective of think tanks and
civil society organizations. Too many think tanks in Africa are focused on
“high-end” academic or policy work that has little relevance to the reali-
ties of governance in the continent. Effective political education must also
persuade voters on the dangers of vote-buying that is practiced in elections
in several African countries.

Activism for Accountability

Increased activism for democratic accountability by citizens and civil

society is essential to improving the quality of leadership in Africa. This is
already happening, but has yet to attain a critical mass that turns it into a
powerful force. Here, Africa’s leapfrogging adaptation of mobile technolo-
gies and social media is a ready vehicle for mass mobilization. In Nigeria,
an incumbent Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, was voted out of
office in the 2015 presidential elections and conceded defeat in a remark-
able gesture uncharacteristic of many African leaders.
Activism should also set clear leadership selection criteria for aspiring

vol.41:2 summer 2017

190 the fletcher forum of world affairs

political leaders in African countries. Such leadership selection criteria

should focus on three factors by which candidates should be assessed: char-
acter, qualifications, and experience.

CONCLUSION

Decades of democracy in many African countries have yet to yield

good leadership in most of the continent. This is an indication that, while
the democratic process and voting freely to choose leaders serve as an
expression of democratic rights, what matters more is the outcome of these
processes in terms of the quality of leadership that democracy produces.
This is why the focus in African countries must now shift far more to
the questions of leadership selection, education, activism, and account-
ability than continue to dwell on the ritual of elections and voting that
have produced largely sub-optimal outcomes in the context of traditional
leadership.
As the Mauritian President Ameena Gurib-Fakim has so pithily put
it: “But the onus is also on all Africans. People have to start asking the right
questions. Politicians, leaders, policy-
makers in normal democracies are all
The oppressive and accountable to the people. But, and I
exploitative status quo of am sorry for saying this brutally, we get
incompetent and corrupt the government we deserve. The one
political leadership we vote in. It’s your vote.”21
If the wave of populism sweeping
[in Africa] …can be the Western world is to serve as any
overthrown, peacefully and lesson to Africans, it makes the point
legitimately, through the that democratic outcomes matter, for
ballot box. better or worse, and that the yoke of
the oppressive and exploitative status
quo of incompetent and corrupt polit-
ical leadership that is still too prevalent in many African countries is not
necessarily destiny. They can be overthrown, peacefully and legitimately,
through the ballot box. f

ENDNOTES
1 See Kingsley Moghalu, “On Development, Worldviews, and Chu Okongwu’s
Helmsman,” Thisday, February 1, 2017, www.thisdaylive.com.
2 Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, 2017.

vol.41:2 summer 2017

 africa’s leadership conundrum 191

3 Richard Poplak, “The New Scramble for Africa: How China Became the Partner of
Choice.” The Guardian (UK December 22, 2016).
4 Awol K. Alio, “Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi: Legacies Memories, Histories.” www.aljazeera.
com, September 5 2014.
5 “Ethiopia: What If They Were Really Set Free?,” The Economist, January 2, 2016.
6 Saul Butera, “Rwanda Targets $1.5 billion in Foreign Investments This Year,”
Bloomberg, April 1, 2016, www.bloomberg.com.
7 Patricia Crisafuli and Andrea Redmond, Rwanda, Inc: How A Devastated Nation
Became an Economic Model for the Developing World (New York, Palgrave Macmillan,
2012), Chapter 6.
8 Jeffrey Gettleman, “The Global Elite’s favorite Strongman,” The New York Times,
September 4, 2013.
9 Nilgün Gökgür, “Rwanda’s Ruling Party-Owned Enterprises: Do They Enhance or
Impede Development?” Discussion Paper/2012.03, Institute of Development Policy
and Management and University of Antwerp, October 2012, www.uantwerpen.be/
images/uantwerpen/container 2143 files/Publications/DP/2013/03-Gokgur.pdf.
10 Anjan Sundram, “Rwanda: The Darling Tyrant,” Politico, March/April 2014, www.
politico.com.
11 Jeffrey Gettleman, “The Global Elite’s Favorite Strongman,” The New York Times,
September 4, 2013.
12 David Sebudubudu with Patrick Molutisi, “Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in the
Development of Botswana,” Research paper 02, Development Leadership Program,
www.dlprog.org.
13 David Sebudubudu with Patrick Molutsi, “Leaders, Elites and Coalitions in the
Development of Botswana.”
14 Reuters, “Nigeria’s Buhari Orders Corruption Probe Over Humanitarian Funds,”
April 19, 2017, www.reuters.com.
15 Kingsley Moghalu, “Africa Must Go Through Its Own Industrial Revolution,” The
Financial Times, May 17, 2016. See also: Moghalu, Kingsley “Nigeria Must Put Its
Foreign Exchange Folly Behind It,” The Financial Times, December 8, 2016.
16 Stan Chu Ilo, “South African President Jacob Zuma Is an Embarrassment to Memory
of Mandela,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 2016.
17 Mail & Guardian, “Constitutional Court Confirms Zuma Must Pay Back R7.8
million for Nkandla,” July 27, 2016, www.mg.co.za.
18 Public Protector, South Africa: “State of Capture”: Report No. 6 of 2016/17, www.
publicprotector.org.
19 Reuters, “South Africa’s ANC Suffers Worst Election Since Taking Power,” www.
reuters.com.
20 David Rooke and William Torbet, “The Seven Transformations of Leadership,” in On
Leadership, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011, pp. 137 – 161.
21 Regina, Jane Jere, “Science, Medicine, & Fixing the Leaky Pipe Syndrome,” New
African Woman, April-May 2017.

vol.41:2 summer 2017