Africa must develop a new generation of purposeful leaders and stronger institutions if it is to break a cycle of governance failures that continues to undermine the continent’s development ambitions, speakers at the Africa Mindset Reset Forum have said.
The issue took centre stage during a presidential panel on Tuesday, August 25, bringing together President Paul Kagame, former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Ghana’s Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang.
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The discussion examined why African countries continue to grapple with similar governance and development challenges despite decades of policies, institutions and continental frameworks designed to address them.
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Kagame said Africa has made significant progress but continues to fall short of its ambitions.
“The continent seems to have everything in place to succeed. It has people, it has resources, but we always end up talking about the Africa we need but it’s never here,” he said.
He argued that the continent has spent too much time discussing its challenges without sufficiently confronting the factors that continue to produce the same outcomes.
“We cannot stay in one place where we are discussing our problems, evidently convincing ourselves that we have more or less what we need to be where we want to be, but we are not getting there,” Kagame said.
The answer, he said, requires looking beyond policies to the behaviours and attitudes that determine whether those policies are actually implemented.
“We can’t change our Africa without changing our behaviour, way of doing things and attitudes,” he said.
Ghana’s Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang said Africa’s governance challenges cannot be addressed by producing more policies and plans alone, arguing that the continent must also change how it understands and takes responsibility for its own future.
“Africa has accumulated decades of policies, development plans and institutional frameworks, yet many of the challenges identified years ago continue to persist. We have not been short of policies and plans. We learnt from primary school going forward about what Africa has dealt with, so why are we still here?” Opoku-Agyemang said.
She said part of the answer lies in Africa’s relationship with its history and the narratives that have shaped how Africans see themselves and their place in the world.
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Opoku-Agyemang said Africans must ask who has been telling the continent’s story, who has been defining its identity and who has been determining what it can become.
“What has our past been like? Who has been telling our story? Who is defining who we are and who we can be? Africa needs to move towards greater agency and action, with Africans taking charge of defining their future rather than allowing external actors to determine the continent’s direction,” she said.
She said Pan-Africanism provided an important foundation for continental solidarity by promoting the idea that African countries needed to come together and act collectively, particularly during the struggle for independence and liberation.
The challenge now, she said, is to carry that principle into a new phase in which African countries work together to build solutions for their people.
“The reason that continues to play out is how we can come together and do things for ourselves as a people, the continent must therefore move beyond asking what others can do for Africa and instead focus on what Africans can build, finance and sustain themselves.”
Former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn linked the persistence of governance problems to the kind of political leadership being produced across the continent.
“Many African countries remain caught in a rent-seeking political economy, where political power can be used to secure access to resources rather than drive productive and inclusive development,” he said.
“The shift should be towards a development-oriented political economy supported by a new generation of leaders. Developing such leadership would take time and should begin with building a critical mass of people equipped with a different mindset.”
Desalegn said institutions such as the African School of Governance (ASG) have a role to play in developing leaders who understand Africa’s challenges and are prepared to pursue solutions beyond short-term political interests.
The former Ethiopian premier also pointed to the need to draw lessons from Africa’s history, particularly from generations of leaders who mobilised around the shared objective of ending colonial rule.
“The challenge now is to create the conditions for a new generation of leaders capable of mobilising around Africa’s contemporary development priorities,” he said.
Former South African President Thabo Mbeki said the leadership that emerged during Africa’s liberation struggles was shaped by particular historical circumstances, including the fight against colonialism and apartheid, which gave people a strong sense of purpose and a willingness to make sacrifices for a collective cause.
He questioned whether Africa can recreate the conditions that produced that generation of leaders at a time when the continent is facing a different set of political, economic and social challenges.
“The question that all of us must ask and answer is, what is it that we do to produce this kind of leader?” Mbeki said.
“Leadership should not be viewed as something that simply emerges once people enter political office. Rather, societies must create the conditions that allow capable and committed leaders to emerge,” he said.
“We must look at ordinary people who have no power. That’s where the leader comes from. That’s the people who must produce the leader.”
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Mbeki said Africa’s history provides examples of how ordinary citizens were mobilised around a shared purpose, pointing to independence and liberation movements that brought together people prepared to make significant sacrifices for political freedom.
“Could the continent similarly mobilise people around the development challenges it faces today?” he asked.
He said the continent has entered a different phase in which its challenges require leadership capable of building effective institutions, strengthening economies and improving the lives of citizens.
That, he argued, makes leadership development a long-term process rather than something that can be solved through changes in individual governments.
“The responsibility extends beyond political parties and governments to African societies themselves, which must help identify, develop and demand leaders capable of serving the public interest,” he said.
The speakers also stressed that governance cannot be separated from the institutions through which decisions are implemented.
The challenge, they said, is not simply whether African countries have the right policies and development plans, but whether governments have the institutional capacity, leadership and political discipline to turn those plans into results.
The discussion therefore placed leadership and institutional effectiveness at the centre of the continent’s struggle to translate its considerable human and natural resources into sustained development.
