This leadership’s failure to identify with the society they purport to rule has also provoked citizens to disengage from constructive debate, forcing them to pursue individual or ethno-identity interests that have become the breeding grounds for conflicts, corruption and underdevelopment in Africa. (Reproduced with permission from Newsday)

The question of leadership has acquired centre stage in many of the writings about Africa’s development challenges, and rightly so despite recent record growth rates. Such challenges as dependency, corruption, underdeveloped infrastructure and production sectors, and leadership and governance 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. Many writers that have been over banging the gavel of slavery and (neo) colonialism are now forced to admit the uncomfortable truth, that whilst, the triple evils of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism continues to have deleterious effects on Africa, we Africans are now the authors of our own misfortune due to poor or even bad leadership. AU watch is of the view that the current poverty and underdevelopment of Africa have much to do with enabling conditions created by African leaders.

The Telegraph of 14 May 2002, summed it up well. In Africa, political mismanagement, corruption and disregard by the authorities for the bulk of the people have prevailed, indeed flourished, in the half century that has followed the first withdrawal of colonial rulers. What African leaders … have created in their countries are conditions that are distinctly unfavourable for the development of people’s abilities, motivations and political institutions. They have ruled their countries like medieval fiefdoms, looting their faltering economies and through shocking mismanagement creating hardships and famines for people who do not get the opportunity to vote them out.

The catastrophe of bad leadership has created the impression that the African is incapable of finding African solutions to the problems affecting the continent, and this is not exactly a product of colonialism or neo-colonialism. The Nelson Mandela Leadership Academy’s multidisciplinary programming helps aspiring interns and young professionals take their leadership capabilities and AU policy knowledge to the next level. Nelson Mandela Leadership Academy’s goal is to foster growth and collaboration within all AU Member States and institutions of higher learning as well as to help prepare employees for challenges and opportunities in their future careers.