Many of the problems in Africa today, including widespread poverty and civil unrest, can be traced to the continents legacy of bad governance. In the post-independence period, authoritarian strongmen took control of many countries, enriching themselves and their cronies by exploiting the peoples labor and their countrys resources. In recent years, however, a growing number of African states have embraced democratic principles and established transparent and open governments. In this book the noted Africa scholar Dr. Robert Rotberg examines the current state of governance and leadership in Africa. He discusses the various types of government found in the continent, clearly showing the correlation between the quality of a countrys leadership and the quality of life enjoyed by that countrys people.

This volume advances the discussions of leadership in Africa's specific history, culture, economy, and politics. The book promotes an understanding of leadership and its paradoxes and illuminates the conditions under which political leadership has been produced, and how those conditions have shaped leaders.

Challenging The Rulers: A Leadership Model for Good Governance brings to the fore the issue of leadership in developing countries like Kenya. Citing specific examples, it singles out bad leadership as the cause of stagnation and underdevelopment in Africa. This book advocates for a serious discourse on leadership as the most critical factor in a national quest for good governance and prosperity. Unlike other writers who bemoan the state of affairs in Africa without offering alternatives, the authors propose a leadership model that can ensure good governance. This is based on the premise that good leadership means good governance hence reasonable economic growth and development. Values and principles of good leadership are outlined. In 2010, Kenya took its pride of place among nations by enacting a new progressive constitution which among other things provides for a devolved government. However, the authors argue that good laws, structures, systems and policies simply provide the infrastructure for good governance. To move Kenya forward, good men and women of vision, who are committed to servant leadership, must rise up to activate these laws to bring about good governance as a means of improving people's quality of life. In a nutshell, this book advocates for reforms in leadership. Challenging The Rulers is a challenge to all leaders - present and aspiring - to adopt this leadership model. To ordinary citizens, it is a call to take necessary action to elect good leaders.

An innovative analysis of political leadership in Africa between 1960 and 2018, drawing on an entirely new dataset.

This book outlines perspectives of emerging and established African scholars on what one could describe as the debate on leadership and the articulation of the life of the mind in Africa's socio-economic, political and cultural life from the time of independence to date. The papers contained in the book cover the following thematic areas: Alternative Leadership Paradigm for Africa's Advancement; African Perspectives on Globalisation and international relations; Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance; Scientific, Technological and Cultural Dimensions of African Development. The first section deals with alternative leadership paradigms for Africa's advancement. It also debates the 'thin line' separating management studies from leadership studies and untangles the hermeneutic complexities in the term 'leadership'. Section two examines among other things, the crucial challenge of globalisation and public ethics and others African perspectives. The section also interrogates the current complexities and credibility deficits in the global governance of trade and towards the end engages philosophical questions about conscience and consciousness in African development and progress. The debates in section three continue to section four and focus on the overall issues of language and liberation, the significance of Multi-, Inter and Trans-Disciplinary Approaches in the analysis of the African continent, appropriate indigenous paradigms for promoting the African renaissance as well as a series of debates on the meaning and prospects of regional integration in Africa's renewal. This provides just a snapshot of a very wide ranging and interesting debate contained in the publication.

Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africa’s diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africa’s multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continent’s long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.