Is and Ought: The Problem of Leadership in Africa’s Development

Abstract

Despite several decades since the end of colonialism, considered by many; a sufficient time frame for any political order to lay the foundations for development, many African States grapple with the reality of underdevelopment, exemplified in social indices such as poverty, poor infrastructure, unemployment and incompetent leadership. Of all these indices, the problem of incompetent/bad leadership lies at the root of the multifaceted problems facing the propensity towards development in Africa as a result of the fact that many of the individuals who end up at the helm of affairs in their respective political domains possess a certain moral lacuna. They eventually permit their selfish interests and desire for unchecked power to supersede the need for an egalitarian mindset that places the common good of the masses at the centre of administrative policies. In addition to this deplorable leadership conundrum in Africa, the palpable lacuna created by institutional incapability to checkmate the excesses of political leaders as a result of institutional weakness is also a primary factor in Africa‟s underdeveloped status. In most cases, African political leaders exercise an overwhelming influence over state institutions to manoeuvre them to succumb to the interests of such political elites. Adopting a descriptive and analytic approach, this paper aims at examining the relationship between development and leadership, the irony of leadership in Africa and how it affects issues of development.