In the last few days, African leaders met in Addis Ababa for the annual African Union (AU) summit. This year’s theme is “Silencing the Guns”, reflecting the continental body’s earlier aspirations to end conflicts and prevent genocide in the continent.
Indisputably, the AU has assumed greater responsibility for conflict management in Africa. To realize this responsibility, it has achieved some successes in managing conflicts in Sudan and the Central African Republic yet a lot has been left undone.
Hence, it is not improper to deduce that African leaders appear increasingly less committed to collective peacemaking and champion of the AU’s peace and security role. Almost citizens across all nations have been witnessing the failure of the leadership in the continent.
The entire circumstances of the continent inevitably necessitate skillful leadership that can meet the rising demand of the society and tackle the continent’s recurrent and deadliest crises. Since researches reveal that the leaders lack well-cultivated leadership qualities, they must continually sharpen their skills and change their promises into actions. Inability to accomplish the promises for their nations results in moral and ethical crises that kill their strength to lead effectively.
It is vital that the leaders must be well aware that their people need more jobs, better educational opportunities, affordable solutions in sanitation and electricity. And they ought to address all these needs.
It is time for them to act; the people no longer need their usual mere promises. In order to meet all these needs, they ought to develop the strongest mix of skills that their educational opportunities permit. Meeting these needs begins with carefully analyzing their feature and entire circumstance of the continent.
More importantly, the continent needs leaders who have developed high ethical standard, basic value that strengthens leaders to meet leadership challenges. To cultivate high ethical standard, they must pursue doing the right thing even when no one is watching but their conscious as their prime audience.
When clean conscious fostered through, courage which is very crucial character for leaders flourishes. Thus, they must determine to refuse tolerating any sense of corruption that violates the well-being of their people. Furthermore, once they develop their own ethical courage, they will lead the continent to peace and prosperity besides setting standards for the young leaders.
Besides all these, African leaders should develop diverse perspectives that can encompass the prevailing gender parity as well as socio-economic, religious and ethnic diversity across the continent. When they have diverse insights, they produce broadly effective solutions considering perspectives of minorities, women and the poor through designing relevant policies.
All in all, African leaders must act now! They should no longer provide mere promises the people who put their trust in them. They must sharpen and cultivate their leadership skills to meet the rising challenges in every sector. Sharpening leadership skills cannot be effective without well cultivated values. The leadership skills are inseparably interwoven with integrity, clean conscious, moral and ethics. When leaders are committed to train themselves in both characters and skills, the continent undoubtedly will benefit a lot.
The Ethiopian Herald February 11/2020
