Africa’s Leadership Deficit: Exploring Pathways to Good Governance and Transformative Politics

Abstract

Observers of Africa lament the failure of the continent to translate the optimism that attended the immediate post-independence period into concrete socio-economic development (Bates, 1981: 6). Various reasons have been adduced to explain this lack of progress, principal among which is the crisis of leadership (Aseka, 2005). Rotberg offers a very damning excoriation of African leadership, contending that the continent ‘has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership; predatory kleptocrats, military-installed autocrats, economic illiterates, and puffed-up posturers’ (Rotberg, 2004) Obiakor notes that ‘post-colonial Africa has witnessed many leaders who have had more devastating effects on [its] cultural, socioeconomic and political futures’ (Obiakor, 2004: 402). It is clear, therefore, that Nelson Mandela’s attribution of Zimbabwe’s woes to a crisis of leadership (Independent, 2008) can be justifiably extended to the rest of the continent. His assertion is corroborated by the inability of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to find, in the last two years, a retired African political leader who is deserving of its prestigious African Leadership Prize. This development is a serious indictment of the quality of leadership that those at the helm of African countries have provided and, hence, reflected by the poor socioeconomic and political environment that characterizes the human condition on the continent. In the words of Adamoleku (1988: 95):