Africa continues to face serious development challenges. Such challenges as dependency, corruption, underdeveloped infrastructure and production sectors, leadership and governance, etc are some of the impediments to Africa's quest for sustainable and equitable development. Explaining such development challenges has continued to elude scholars. To the radical leftist scholars, Africa's underdevelopment can adequately be explained by its forceful and uneven integration into the global economic system. However, with over fifty years of independence, the debate is increasingly focusing on Africa's leadership as good explanation for its poverty and underdevelopment. This paper argues that the current poverty and underdevelopment of Africa have much to do with enabling conditions created by African leaders and that addressing this requires Africans to go back to pre-colonial history where they can draw good lessons rather than continuing importing Western based models which may not necessarily fit into Africa's unique characteristics.
African Leadership is an edited collection enriched by the people who have lived and experienced indigenous leadership first-hand, demonstrating how African leadership is distinctive from usual Western hegemonic paradigms.
This book is a timely guide on what constitutes effective leadership in Africa. It explores how today’s leaders in Africa perceive their role, the challenges they experience, and how they operate effectively as leaders. In the era of globalization, there is an increasing need to offer guidance on how leaders can adjust their leadership style to suit situational contexts. Drawing on case study and survey data, this book illustrates to scholars and leaders worldwide the vision of leadership that is emerging in Africa. It will contribute to the development of a new community of global leaders, integrating cutting-edge knowledge on leadership development in Africa.
This book looks at the challenges and possibilities facing leadership in Africa today by providing a rich history of the continent, the complexities the continent has experienced, and the great hope and encouragement that remains. It explores what African leadership is and the possible effects it has on leaders, followers, and organizations across the continent. While some maintain that leadership of and within Africa presents too many challenges, this book argues that Africa is ripe with potential and on the verge of an African Renaissance. This book looks beyond socioeconomic factors to explore different perspectives of leadership such as holistic, transformational, and servant leadership, as well as values and ethics. Taking a philosophical and pragmatic approach, this edited collection provides insight from African-born leadership scholars to deliver a first-hand account of the challenges the continent faces. Their unique experiences and immersion in the African world pave the way for a revival of leadership through a lens of history, tradition, economics, societal, and leadership perspectives.
Resolving the African Leadership Challenge: Insight From History examines leadership in pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial modern Africa, exploring the origin of Africa’s leadership challenge, and providing lessons to enhance leadership effectiveness.
'It became apparent to me that, due to the complexity of problems that face humanity today, those who do not know should not lead.' – Professor Tshilidzi Marwala In 2020 the world found itself in a state of flux. A global pandemic disrupted the world order while the digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with its challenges and huge potential benefits, presented a fundamental paradigm shift. How are Africa's leaders to respond, today? In a crisis, decisive leadership is imperative for the public good, but as we move beyond the pandemic and confront the changes of the 4IR, we must determine how we will adapt. What is clear is that leadership will have to be grounded in scientific and mathematical thinking and in good governance. It follows, then, that for South Africa to succeed as a nation in the 21st century we must be able to provide our people with an all-embracing education, not just science and technology but human and social sciences as well. Leading in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive overview of how the world is changing and lessons we can draw from leaders, particularly in the African context. From Charlotte Maxeke and the Rain Queen Modjadji, to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Eric Molobi and Richard Maponya, there is much to learn from great leaders. The challenges of the 21st century are immense, from climate change to social media and the digital divide that deepens our understanding of inequality, particularly in the 'new normal'. South Africa faces not only a shifting global context but a fraught local context of stagnant growth, rising unemployment and deep-seated inequality, worsened in 2020 by the national lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The 4IR offers solutions to many of our most pressing problems and we cannot afford to be left behind. The certainty is that the 4IR has arrived. The debates lie in how we respond to it. Tshilidzi Marwala deciphers it all, while providing a framework for navigating these shifts. A leading academic of international standing, and Deputy Chair of South Africa's Presidential 4IR Commission, Tshilidzi Marwala provides valuable insights into how leadership should be responding to the digital challenges of the 21st century.
