Behaviour has in a long run been
linked to one’s upbringing. This assertion has surprisingly not developed keen
interest in research to identify whether behaviour and upbringing pose an
intricate cause-effect relationship, probably since it is obvious that one’s
upbringing contributes explicably to one’s character. But wait a minute, this
could be a hasty generalization fallacy, as some have been reported to
demonstrate changed behaviour out of exposure rather than upbringing. May be
the affinity to one’s upbringing would overwrite peer pressure to change one’s
behaviour. We all appreciate the fact that one’s upbringing is a subject of
parental control and it is therefore inevitable to conclude that ‘a house is as
good as its leaders’. Leaving the debate of nurture versus nature to the
sociological discourse, I am compelled to discuss the ‘fact’ that a country is
as good as its leadership. I would rather reluctantly endorse it as a fact, in
the historical and political landscape’s sense and not in scientific sense.
Africa is one such continent that
showcases the ‘truth’ about this assertion. Statistically speaking Africa has
been the hub of all kinds of development and natural resources. The African
continent is renowned for its natural deposits. According to the African
Natural Resource Centre (2015) the continent account for 30% of the world’s
minerals and about 10% and 8% of oil and gas resources respectively. Following
this truth, Africa has the second largest tropical forest in the world. The
continent has vast fishing resources added to the above, with the largest lake
in the world, Lake Victoria generating over $600 million every year. According
to the National Geographic the continent produced over 483 tons of gold in
2008, accounting to 22% of the world gold production. There is a lot of wealth
this continent has comparative to other continents such as Europe and South
America. Realistically, the continent has faced a couple of setbacks, citing
colonialism and slavery, which have robbed it of ‘part of its’ potential for
world dominance in development. I wish to state that this robbed the continent
‘a part’ not all, sadly the continent continues to lag behind in terms of
economic development. The largest number of countries that lag behind UNDP human
development index and World Bank world development index come from Africa.
Slavery and Colonialism truly are
partially to blame but the African continent is dogged by leadership with
nothing to showcase but poor governance, corruption and cronyism. The continent
has seen the richest presidents in the world to say the least. According to
Ibrahim Index, 21 out of 54 countries in the continent have deteriorated in
terms of governance, which includes Malawi. The truth is a country is as good
as its leadership. Where leadership fails, the country also fails. Now this
takes me to the very subject of our discussion, and I will focus on my country
Malawi.
The nation is salvaged by reports
on failure to follow the agreed budgetary lines for the country to be a
recipient of the Extension Credit Facility (ECF) from IMF. These reports also come in
the light of the understanding of the rationale behind a number of cuts
outlined in the new public reforms in social service delivery in the sectors of
education, agriculture, health and social welfare, subject to the limited
resources. All these developments spell doom to the plight of the nationals in
the nation which is on its economic bedrock and approaching the looming
epicentre of food shortage. These developments beg the following questions:
Does the Malawi government consider good governance as a priority? Does the
leadership of the nation share the economic hardship of its citizens? Is the
fight against corruption a rhetoric PR gimmick or is it a cause to be achieved?
Is this the outlined agenda of the current DPP government for national
development? How should the government promote its development agenda in the
face of the challenges it is facing? The country’s performance is accredited to
its leadership, whether good performance or poor performance. The country
requires a change of thinking, a revolutionary development agenda, and a
divorce-filing from its old politics. Someone once said, you cannot continue
doing the things the same way and expect different results. I would like to
pinpoint the kind of leadership that is needful for the country to forge
forward.
1. Selfless Leadership
A selfless leadership is the
leadership that aspires the best in others before aspiring the best in itself. Doug
Dickerson comments the following on selfless leadership: ‘the emergence of
selfless leadership begins with this fundamental principle: until you empower
your people, [you are only a spectator]. When they are empowered, they can
produce, achieve and succeed’. John Maxwell, another renowned leadership
scholar once stated of the difficulty it is of finding common ground with
others if the only person focused on is oneself. The disaster that the African
continent has faced, creating more casualties that war, and famine combined, in
fact it is the derivative of the two, is selfish, self-centred leadership and
governance. African leaders have amassed themselves wealth with a proportionate
percentage of their countries’ GDPs. The desire to lead should be the desire to
take ‘a people’ or ‘a nation’ from one place to another place. If there is not
consideration for promoting, uplifting, or progressing from one level to the
next level, the activity of leadership throws into pieces the very concept of
leadership.
2. Visionary Leadership
Africa continent remains where it
is for lack of vision and visionary leadership. In fact, the continent is a
recipient to imported strategic visions in exchange for aid. The Structural
Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have only worked retrogressively to the
developmental interests of the continent, one would put it. But besides the
fact that SAPs and other global strategies do not reflect African interests,
one wonders why domestic policies and strategies have not created opening for
wealth and job creation in Malawi. As I was writing this article, news had
started circulating that the Ministry of Health will not afford to employ 51
medical doctors for lack of financial resources. The country is lagging behind
in terms of provision of medical services, with intermittent medical supply
shortages and technical expertise. The last thing the nation would do is to
frustrate the very efforts it is creating by denying to accord employment
opportunities to the already trained medical doctors. The country’s strategic
vision is seen off-track dogged by the rampant and unchecked corrupt practices.
As a nation, we need a clear strategy that will have allocated resources, to
say the least. The last corruption scandal has taken a snail’s pace, with only
four court cases reaching their conclusion, owing to the missing case files,
and minimal funding to the anti-graft bodies such as Anti-Corruption Bureau and
the Judiciary System. There is surely a high tower responsibility to the
current government to put bolts and nuts together to make a sound impression to
the donor community of its commitment to fighting corruption. It is not a
responsibility to the faint-hearted. Resources that have been used for catering
the bloated entourage should have been saved for other rather prudent purposes.
The nation needs vision and strategy which will definitely shake the dogmatic
quest for self-aggrandizement and encourage economic patriotism.
3. Progressive leadership
We need a progressive leadership,
a leadership that is styled in self-belief and over-reliance on self-potential
for development. Malawi needs progressive mindedness. Country needs a
developmental statesmanship with a view for the generations to come. We all
read history about Joseph Stalin’s five year plans, which much as he was a
dictator, and I don’t commend him for that, he readied his country for the
second world war, both in terms of machinery, weaponry and manpower. This
country needs to apply the theory of developmental state which according to
many scholars such as Joseph Stiglitz, and Adrian Leftwich, is a state that
benefits from the combination of private business advancements with a sizable
state control which interface in a mutually beneficial pattern. It is a terms,
judging from the one who coined it, Chalmers Johnson, in his book, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, ‘a
shorthand for the seamless web of political, bureaucratic, and moneyed
influences that structures economic life in capitalist Northeast Asia’. In
fact, being a developmental state, is the only survivor jacket in the current global
'economic free-fall' that has an impeccable guarantee of a safe landing. The
country requires concerting its energies on sacrificial approaches to making
Malawi graduate from being a primary producer into an industrialized secondary
producer, and this can only be done through progressive leadership. So far, I
remain unconvinced on whether we are on track with this goal.
Lastly, the nation remains on its
economic sickbed and it frustrates the heart that strategies on paper remain on
paper, probably until a wake-up call hits us and shake us a little bit from our
economic dogmatic slumber. We need better leadership to steer this nation
towards unexplored waters, and the current leadership has an uphill task to
demonstrate this leadership, or sooner or later the nation may render it
expendable.
