Perspectives on Thought Leadership for Africaís Renewal


Book Description

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.




The African Conundrum


Book Description

The African conundrum... is rooted out of the historical, philosophical and cultural bastardisation, imbalances and inequalities which many post-colonial African governments have always sought to address, though with varying degrees of success, since the 1960s. Lamentably, this African conundrum is rarely examined in a systematic manner that takes into account the geopolitical milieu of the continent, past and present. This volume seeks to interrogate and examine the extent of the impact of the geopolitical seesaw which seems poised to tip in favour of the Global North. The book grapples with the question on how Africa can wake up from its cavernous intellectual slumber to break away from both material and psychological dependency and achieve a transformative political and socio-economic self-reinvention and self-assertion. While the African conundrum is largely a result of historic oppression and a resilient colonial legacy, this book urges Africans to rethink their condition in a manner that makes Africa responsible and accountable for its own destiny. The book argues that it is through this rethinking that Africa can successfully transcend the logic of post-imperial dependency.




LEAD: Leadership Effectiveness in Africa and the African Diaspora


Book Description

This book considers the new business environment of modern-day Africa, addressing how management styles must adapt to societal changes across the continent. As investment in the continent grows and African businesses begin to look beyond their own borders, there comes a real need to understand leadership from an Afro-centric perspective. This book explores the similarities and differences across African countries, compares them with other regions, and identifies particular cultural realities that managers must consider in order to be successful in the new business environment of modern Africa. Building on their Leadership Effectiveness in Africa and the African Diaspora (LEAD) research project, the authors provide an empirical understanding of African leadership styles and how businesses can harness these more effectively. Drawing on the African Diaspora’s values, beliefs, and preferences, as well as anecdotal material from African academics and managers, this book grants a realistic view of leadership in various African countries including Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Africa. It will be invaluable to academics, students, and anyone interested in African and global business leadership from a non-Western perspective.




Learning to Lead for Transformation


Book Description

Learning to Lead for Transformation takes an international and inclusive approach, exploring learning and educational leadership from different cultural and theoretical perspectives, from Habermas' theory of cognitive interests to Freire's approach to education and Ngara's decolonized epistemology and Ubuntu-based developmental approach. Enriching his presentation with Japanese and Western examples, Ngara uses the African tradition of storytelling as well as engaging exercises to explore: - The developmental approach to teaching and learning - The link between the proposed pedagogy and leadership development - The importance of relevant curriculum content - The importance of approaches based on indigenous knowledge systems or cultural traditions. Each topic is introduced with a “tuning in exercise”, and the reader is guided to reflect on their own experiences and understanding throughout the book with discussion points and activities.




Natural Resource Sovereignty and the Right to Development in Africa


Book Description

This book explores the nexus between natural resources ownership and the right to development in Africa. The right to sovereignty over natural resources and the right to development are recognised and protected in an extensive framework of international, regional and domestic instruments. They guarantee people's entitlement to fully and freely utilise their natural resources as a means of subsistence and for economic, social and cultural development. Yet, despite the abundance of natural resources in Africa a majority of the people on the continent remain largely impoverished. This book articulates the central argument that to achieve the right to development in Africa requires appropriate governance of the continent’s natural resources to which the people of Africa are guaranteed sovereign ownership. With case study illustrations from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, chapters explore the normative measures, specific guarantees and community entitlements to natural resources for the realisation of the right to development. The book will be an invaluable guide to scholars and postgraduate students of Natural Resources, Development and African studies as well as policymakers and practitioners in these areas.




Post-Independence Development in Africa


Book Description

The book Post-Independence Development in Africa: Decolonisation and Transformation Prospects revisits the development debates and development realities in Africa. This is achieved by offering theoretical comments about post-independence development in Africa and by providing historical details pertaining to the development approaches adopted in Africa immediately after independence in the 1960s and mid-70s. Sitting at the intersection of two sets of scholarly literature, namely; literature on development and literature on development discourses and practices in Africa, the book comprises a mixture of detailed sector-specific accounts of the status of development on the continent. The chapters in the book also contribute to clarifying how the two strands of literature intersect using several case studies across Africa.




China From Where We Stand


Book Description

What is Comparative Sinology? China from Where We Stand brings together powerful, diverse voices to define the boundaries and possibilities of this new field, providing a range of perspectives – insider, outsider and in-between – with China at the center. This exemplifies a new China: progressive, outward-looking, yet reflective. Comparative Sinology studies how China has been studied. In today’s global world of hybrid, hyphenated identities, such studies cannot be confined to how non-Chinese study China. What does it mean to be Chinese? Where does it start? Where does it end? Like the related disciplines of China Studies and National Studies, Comparative Sinology is interdisciplinary. Though the four parts of this book represent Philosophy, Literature, History, and Culture, all articles could fit in at least two of these categories. This book redefines the boundaries of traditional academic study, including the subject position, as it is essential, when trying to understand China and its place in the world today, to look at the place of each one of us. Personal connections may be explicit or implicit; but every author here is passionate and personally connected to the work that he or she does, and to China’s future. The practical and intellectual possibilities of this discipline are vast and varied, and this book offers a potential springboard for such ideas.




Inclusive Development In Africa


Book Description

This book addresses a fundamental developmental challenge for Africa: given all that we know about pertinent issues, what should be done to ensure effective development in Africa? The changing imperatives of international development, the reform of international finance institutions and the growth-development nexus debates as well as varied implications for Africa emanating from global economic crises are critical if Africa’s development is to be better understood. Undoubtedly, revisiting the origins, contexts, complexities and contradictions of the lopsided global order and their effects on development and implications for Africa’s development is necessary. Contributions emphasise the need to radically transform global relations and to accelerate the pursuit of our quest for inclusive development in Africa; acknowledging that we must further problematise Africa’s development in the context of the obtaining global power dynamics and systematically examine the implications of the global economic crises for women as well as for land and agrarian reforms. The book is a timely contribution to our understanding of the global realities confronting Africa, with specific suggestions on how to improve development.







Breaking the Challenges


Book Description

Awareness of the community culture is necessary for a successful leadership. No leader can successfully lead a community ignoring its culture. Knowledge of the culture helps shape the strategies that would convince people to buy-in and reduce resistance and weaken opposition attitudes. A leader must govern with moral purpose on all his/her actions or initiatives. He/she cannot tolerate social vices such as stealing the community's money, embezzling money from the people's business, behaving as political gangsters, displaying indifferent attitudes in face of calamities, and ignoring people's misery. A good leader is someone who strives to work for the betterment of his community. He/she is someone who helps everyone to succeed. He/she is the guarantor of the people's security and hope for the better. Any political leader, any organizational leader who neglects the importance of the culture would cause chaos that would lead the country or the organization to its demise, sadly. The relentlessness to quick enrichment from embezzling the country natural resources, squandering its assets through stingy abominable deals depriving the country from its economic and financial means is clearly the curse to the country development. Again, a leader must live with a moral purpose. He must be the embodiment of a decent model of live to the people he is in charge of or the organization he oversees. His first and utmost responsibility should be the welfare of the people and not his own quick enrichment. Some African leaders should consider going back to the traditional African model of leadership, adapting it to the world's everchanging events and realities. This book is to remind African leaders the meaning of leadership.