Africa S New Leaders

The chain of crises

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

Political leadership can be a crucial ingredient for the development of sub-Saharan Africa. The region has been going through important transformations, with both political landscapes and economic trajectories becoming increasingly diverse. The changes underway include the role of leadership and its broader impact. This volume argues that, on the whole, African leaders and the way they reach power generally do contribute to shaping their countries’ progresses and achievements. It also zooms in on some influential African leaders who recently emerged in key states across the continent, illustrating and explaining the individual paths that brought them to power while reflecting on the prospects for their governments’ actions. Far from the simplistic stereotypes of immovable, ineffective and greedy rulers, the resulting picture reveals dynamic and rapidly evolving political scenarios with key implications for development in the region.

The profiles are pressented alphabetically by country and the essential facts about each leader are featured in bold type at the beginning of each biography - the leader's rank, date of birth, ethnicity, religion, and political party."--BOOK JACKET.

This book is a timely guide on what constitutes effective leadership in Africa. It explores how today’s leaders in Africa perceive their role, the challenges they experience, and how they operate effectively as leaders. In the era of globalization, there is an increasing need to offer guidance on how leaders can adjust their leadership style to suit situational contexts. Drawing on case study and survey data, this book illustrates to scholars and leaders worldwide the vision of leadership that is emerging in Africa. It will contribute to the development of a new community of global leaders, integrating cutting-edge knowledge on leadership development in Africa.

Do political leaders matter for development in Africa? Political leaders south of the Sahara have taken centre stage since countries in the region gained independence in the 1960s, yet a 'leadership trap' soon emerged with power-holders overstaying in office and chronic instability caused by coups resulting in decades of disappointing developmental performances. The beginnings of change are found in political reforms of the early 1990s, with many sub-Saharan countries introducing multiparty elections and an increasingly regular succession of leaders. But what impact did the new mechanisms for selecting leaders have on the political stabilization of African states, on the growth of their economies, and on the welfare of ordinary citizens? Drawing on a new dataset called the Africa Leadership Change (ALC), this innovative analysis of political leadership in Africa investigates the distinct leadership dynamics of development processes across the region from 1960 to 2018, revealing how, as Africa began to change its leaders and the way they reach power, these new leaders themselves began to change Africa.

Challenging the myth of African Canadian leadership "in crisis," this book opens a broad vista of inquiry into the many and dynamic ways leadership practices occur in Black Canadian communities. Exploring topics including Black women’s contributions to African Canadian communities, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black LGBTQ, HIV/AIDS advocacy, motherhood and grieving, mentoring, and anti-racism, contributors appraise the complex history and contemporary reality of blackness and leadership in Canada. With Canada as a complex site of Black diasporas, contributors offer an account of multiple forms of leadership and suggest that through surveillance and disruption, practices of self-determined Black leadership are incompatible with, and threatening to, White "structures" of power in Canada. As a whole, African Canadian Leadership offers perspectives that are complex, non-aligned, and in critical conversation about class, gender, sexuality, and the politics of African Canadian communities.