A leading institution for capacity building in Africa, the African Capacity Building Foundation, working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has urged African countries to step up investment in leadership development across the underdeveloped continent’s public sector, saying technical expertise, sound policies and strong institutional systems alone cannot guarantee sustainable reforms.
Examining how stronger leadership capacity could help African governments surmount resistance to reforms, improve public financial management and translate policy initiatives into measurable institutional results, the two organizations on September 3 held a webinar based on “Leading Public Sector Transformation in Africa: Leadership Lessons from the LEAPS Programme.”
In his address during the webinar, Mamadou Biteye, who is the ACBF Executive Secretary, acknowledged that Africa’s ‘public-sector reform is rarely held back by a lack of good ideas.’
“More often, the real challenge is our ability to lead change by bringing people together, building trust, overcoming resistance, and sustaining momentum”, said Biteye.
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The LEAPS programme is a six-month executive leadership development initiative delivered through ACBF’s Ubora Academy, which is Africa’s learning and knowledge-sharing platform offering courses, webinars, and educational resources across various thematic areas.
Since its launch in 2024, the LEAPS programme has enrolled more than 295 participants across eight African countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
The programme combines self-paced online learning with live facilitated sessions, executive coaching, group mentoring, technical seminars and peer exchange.
Biteye said that African governments were implementing ambitious public financial management reforms aimed at increasing domestic resource mobilization, improving public investment, strengthening budgeting and enhancing expenditure management.
Yet he (Biteye) also said progress remained uneven, with leadership, coordination and implementation continuing to pose major capacity challenges across the continent.
As a result, Biteye said the challenges led to the creation of the Leadership Excellence for Africa’s Public Sector (LEAPS) programme by ACBF, with the backing of the Gates Foundation.
The program, according to Biteye, was built on the understanding that technical expertise, while essential, is inadequate to deliver complex institutional reforms.
Said Biteye: “Reform leaders must do more than understand systems; they must inspire people, build trust, navigate competing interests, manage resistance, and sustain momentum when reforms become difficult.”
In a bid to address Africa’s economic reforms pragmatically, ensuring that it does not just end on paper and in mere speeches, ACBF piloted the LEAPS program first in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and The Gambia, with Nigeria, Tanzania, and representatives from the African Union Commission joining the second cohort, while Ethiopia became the ninth country to join in the third cohort.
Already, that has wrought some positive results, according to Biteye, who said earlier evidence from LEAPS alumni has been encouraging, with change stories from the first cohort showing how participants translated leadership learning into institutional improvements.
For instance, said Biteye, in Ghana, coaching helped strengthen accountability, goal setting and collaboration between finance and audit institutions, while in Zimbabwe, the program helped officials navigate complex reforms under significant institutional and resource constraints.
In Kenya, thanks to the LEAPS program, participants have demonstrated how people-centeredleadership could complement technical expertise in advancing digital public financial management reforms and securing stakeholder support.
As such, Biteye said the outcomes have reflected the transformation LEAPS has sought to promote – developing reform leaders who can deliver better results.
“We believe leadership is a core institutional competence that enables governments and their respective institutions to translate policies, strategies, and technical reforms into sustainable results. It is for this reason that ACBF is introducing The LEAPS Executive Program and opening it up to all Public Sector officials across the continent,” Biteye said.
But he (Biteye) also said: “systems do not reform themselves; budgets do not implement themselves; digital platforms do not transform institutions by themselves; and policies do not deliver results by themselves.”
“People do -and when they are equipped, inspired, and supported, institutions change.”
In his remarks during the ACBF’s virtual meeting, Adil Ababou, who is the Senior Program Officer in Development Policy and Finance at the Gates Foundation, said in pursuing reforms in governments, “our experience is that technical capacity alone is not enough to deliver lasting reforms.”
In fact, Ababou echoed sentiments by Biteye.
“People lead reforms. And many of the most difficult challenges facing public finance officials are not purely technical questions. They are questions of leadership: How do you build consensus around a difficult reform? How do you manage resistance to change? How do you work across institutional boundaries? How do you maintain momentum when political or economic circumstances change?” said Ababou.
Ababou also said effective public financial management was particularly important because decisions made by ministries of finance, revenue authorities, treasuries and other public institutions ultimately affect governments’ ability to finance education, healthcare, social protection and other essential services.
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“In the context of abrupt aid cuts, government finance is now, more than ever, the backbone of sustained and nationally owned development,” said Ababou.
Ababou identified ownership as the second major lesson from the LEAPS programme.
Meanwhile, as Africa battles with reforms built around hero-worshipping of leaders, Ababou dismissed this as rather untenable, saying “leadership cannot remain an individual capability.”
According to Ababou, “successful reform requires teams, institutions and networks of officials who are able to work across the administrative silos that often characterize government.”
As such, added Ababou, “if we want sustained improvements in public financial management, we have to invest not only in systems and technical skills, but also in the people who will lead those systems through change.”
In fact, said Ababou, the ACBF-Gates programme does not impose predetermined reforms or solutions on participating countries.
Instead, according to Ababou, the ACBF-Gates approach was becoming increasingly important as African countries placed greater emphasis on policy ownership, national sovereignty and defining their own development priorities.