Revising the Leadership Paradigm in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Study of Community‐Based Leadership

• Author: Peter Fuseini Haruna
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2009.02043.x
• Date: 01 September 2009
• Published date: 01 September 2009

Revising the Leadership Paradigm in Sub-Saharan Africa 941

Peter Fuseini Haruna

Texas A&M International University

Revising the Leadership Paradigm in Sub-Saharan Africa:

A Study of Community-Based Leadership

Looking at

Administrative

Innovation and

Change Abroad

Peter Fuseini Haruna is an associate

professor of public administration at Texas

A&M International University, Laredo,

Texas. His research focuses on compara-

tive administration and management,

administrative reform, leadership, and

governance structures.

E-mail: pharuna@tamiu.edu

[T]he essence of leadership

… [in sub-Saharan Africa] is

construed narrowly in terms

of transactions and exchanges

between individual leaders and

their so-called followers.

Much of the discourse on

leadership in sub-Saharan

Africa emphasizes leader

characteristics, skills, styles,

and behaviors, while ignoring

the relationships, interactions,

practical judgments, and unique

contexts that make up leadership

in everyday cultural community

life.  is essay argues that the

focus on individual leaders hardly ref‌l ects leadership

as practice in African communities. An alternative,

pragmatic view based on unique historicity and

cultural community norms is proposed, one that has

a chance of fostering social change and institutional

transformation.

From decolonization through the so-called

second liberation era, sub-Saharan Africa has

suf‌f ered a poverty of leadership. Whether in

thought or in practice, leadership has been narrowly

circumscribed, def‌i ned, and operationalized.  e

nationalistic leadership of the 1960s, authoritar-

ian leadership spanning the decade of the 1970s,

and managerial leadership proclaiming an “African

renaissance” in the 1990s all assumed the leader-fol-

lower perspective, which places the responsibility for

leadership in the hands of the

“leader.”  is dominant theme

portrays followers as passive

or even subservient and takes

the context largely for granted.

Calls for leadership develop-

ment, along with leadership

research and scholarship, simi-

larly take the superf‌i cial focus

of leader characteristics, styles,

and behaviors (African Leader-

ship Forum 1988; Adamolekun

1999; Fowler, Njuguna, and

Owiti 2002; Haruna 1999). As

a result, the essence of leader-

ship is construed narrowly

in terms of transactions and

exchanges between individual

leaders and their so-called fol-

lowers.

 e problem with this restric-

tive view of leadership based on

traits and behavioral com-

petencies is that it of‌f ers an

incomplete understanding of

the leadership phenomenon as practice.  e approach

installs a leadership model that marginalizes com-

munal ef‌f ort and underrates signif‌i cant followership

roles, on which much development depends. It hardly

takes into account the contributions of families, com-

munities, and networks in forming social capital to

facilitate the pursuit of common purposes. It seems

to contribute to a hero worship syndrome in which

sub-Saharan Africa awaits “great men” to lead it to

the proverbial “promised land.” However, as Stogdill

(1948) argues, the approach produces endless lists of

characteristics, skills, and traits, which are not predic-

tors of ef‌f ectiveness across all situations. Moreover, the

totality of sub-Saharan Africa’s experience—its unique

historicity, sociocultural context, and institutional

practices—constrains perceived personal qualities by

which the current model is framed.

As sub-Saharan Africa engages

in the search for and imple-

mentation of institutional

capacity to promote governance

and foster sociocultural change,

it is time to reinvigorate a deep-

er sense of public leadership,

with a view toward developing

a systemic perspective that is

anchored in its unique his-

tory, politics, and sociocultural

context. How might such an

undertaking begin?  is essay

asserts that sub-Saharan Africa’s

leadership paradigm needs

As sub-Saharan Africa

engages in the search for

and implementation of

institutional capacity to

promote governance and foster

sociocultural change, it is time

to reinvigorate a deeper sense of

public leadership, with a view

toward developing a systemic

perspective that is anchored in

its unique history, politics, and

sociocultural context.