THE CHALLENGES OF LEADERSHIP

IN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

Report on the Inaugural Programme

of the
Africa Leadership Forum

Ota, Nigeria
24 October to 1 November 1988
THE CHALLENGES OF LEADERSHIP
IN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT

Report on the Inaugural Programme

of the
Africa Leadership Forum

Ota, Nigeria
24 October to 1 November 1988
 Contents

Page

I. Introduction 1
II. Review of Proceedings 5

A. Challenges of economic development 6

B. Challenges of the international
Economic environment 13
C. Challenges of social and cultural development 17
D. Challenges of the South African situation 24
E. Challenges of policy formation 26

III. Group Discussions

A. Political and strategic issues 30

B. Economic and social issues 33

IV. Summary and Conclusion 37

Appendix I

A List of participants 41

Appendix II

A List of statements and papers 45

 I. Introduction

The Africa Leadership Forum was established as a private initiative to assist

incumbent and potential African leaders who have been propelled into
leadership positions yet who have not had the opportunity to acquire all the
skills necessary for leadership. It is, indeed, only rarely that African leaders
have been adequately exposed to and gained experience on the myriad issues
and problems confronting the continent. The enormous difficulties that face
Africa today and the even more worrisome problems of tomorrow make it
imperative to establish such an institution as the Africa Leadership Forum.

It is the view of the Forum that leadership skills are not only prerequisites
for those in the executive branch of government or in the top echelons of
political parties. Leadership skills are needed at many levels of the society.
Industry and finance have become such powerful sectors today that even a
dictator, albeit with an arsenal at his disposal, must bend under pressure
from the leaders of the private sector. In our educational systems, too, and in
our military institutions, in the arts and culture, in government service and in
diplomacy, there are many people who must posses the skills of leadership.

The intention of the Forum is to identify potential leaders, in all these

spheres, through the assistance of seasoned leaders, the growing pool of
active participants, through the press, and through recognized personal
achievers. The Forum aims to bring together participants from Africa, with a
sprinkle of participants from other regions, and incumbent and retired
leaders from all walks of life. It sees such interaction as important in
offering informal preparation and assistance to those who would be called
upon to lead in the various sectors of the African continent.

The broad objectives of the Forum are:

(a) To encourage the diagnosis, understanding, and informed search for

solutions to local, regional, and global problems, taking full account
of their interrelationships and mutual consequences;
(b) To develop, organize and support programmes for the training of able
and promising Africans with leadership potentials so as to expose
them to the demands, duties and obligations of leadership positions
and to prepare them systematically to assume higher responsibilities
and to meet the challenges of an interdependent world;

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 (c) To generate greater understanding and to enhance the knowledge and
awareness of issues of development and social problems, within a
global context, among young, potential leaders from all sectors of the
society, cutting across national, regional, continental, professional
and institutional borders and with a view to fostering close and
enduring relationships and promoting life-long association and
cooperation among such potential leaders:

(d) To support and encourage the diagnosis and informed search for
appropriate and effective solutions to local and regional African
problems from an African perspective – within the framework of
global interdependence. This includes consideration for phased action
programmes that can be initiated by various countries, sub-regions
and institutions.

The inaugural programme of the Africa Leadership Forum took place at the
Forum’s Conference Centre, Ota, Nigeria from 24 October to 1 November
1988. Participants from eleven African countries and six non-African
countries attended this inaugural programme. The list of these participants is
contained in Appendix 1.

The Programme was opened by His Excellency Ibrahim Babangida,

President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who declared on that occasion
publicly the support of his Government for the private initiative that the
Africa Leadership Forum represents, which may materialize in the near
future in a very substantial way. Subsequently, a keynote address entitled
“Africa in Today’s World” was delivered by the former Head of State of
Nigeria, General, Olusegun Obasanjo, who had initiated the idea of
establishing the Africa Leadership Forum. Both addresses are of pivotal
importance for appreciating the enormity of the leadership crises in Africa
and they are published together with the discussion thereon in a separate
booklet.

The inaugural programme comprised a number of seminars, at which papers

were presented and discussed, and group meetings where the leadership
challenges in specific areas could be discussed in more depth. The
programme also provided direct and stimulating exposure to the pressing
problems of rural areas, through a one-day field trip to the Ibarapa area of
Oyo State, and to the problems of metropolitan Lagos, through a

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presentation by and exchange of views with the Military Governor of Lagos
State. The participants also enjoyed social programmes and contacts with the
Ifo-Ota Local Government Council and the Government of Lagos State.

While reflecting on the operations of the Forum, participants suggested that

future meetings should be of a shorter duration than the inaugural
programme, lasting, perhaps, not more than four days. Such meetings can be
held twice a year. As a long-term project, there was a feeling that the Forum
should help initiate the establishment of a high-level African think tank or a
Center for Policy and Strategic Studies, where much sustained investigation
and analysis of the African situation can be undertaken to assist policy
formulation and decision-making by African leaders.

The critical financial support by several donors, which helped make the
Forum and the inaugural programme a reality, must be gratefully
acknowledged. Generous and significant contributions were received from
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Government of
Japan, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Mr. Victor Mpoyo, an
African industrialist, and the Africa Leadership Foundation Inc.

The Forum extends its sincere gratitude also to governmental agencies,

embassies, private sector institutions and individuals whose warm hospitality
added welcome social dimensions to an intellectually most stimulating
encounter. It is not possible to indicate all of these benefactors in this brief
report but special mention must be made of the Nigerian Ministry of
External Affairs for facilitating the attendance of participants; the Lagos
State Government for hosting delegates to a lecture on the “Problems of the
Lagos Metropolitan Area” and a delightful dinner and culture show; the Ifo-
Ota Local Government Council for exposing delegates to cultural life at the
grass-roots level; to the A.G. Leventis Group of Companies and to Tower
Aluminium (Nigeria) Limited for offering dinners at which participants were
exposed to the private sector interest in leadership issues.

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 II. Review of Proceedings

Appendix II contains a list of some nineteen statements and papers presented

at the programme. Each of the papers examined specific aspects of the
challenges confronting African leaders today and the nature of the external
environment in which they have to work to resolve these challenges. In order
to provide some indication of the rich content of ideas, views and
suggestions provided by these papers, the review has been organized in five
sections:

A. The Challenges of economic development

B. The Challenges of the international economic environment
C. The Challenges of social and cultural development
D. The Challenges of the South African situation
E. The Challenges of policy formation

The deliberations and recommendations of two groups which were formed

to allow participants to explore in greater detail responses to current
leadership challenges are reviewed in Chapter III.

A. Political and strategic issues

B. Economic and social issues

Chapter IV provides in a nutshell the broad conclusions reached during this

inaugural programme of the Africa Leadership Forum.

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 A. The Challenges of Economic Development

Several papers dealt with the economic situation of the continent. Starting
with the opening address by President Babangida entitled “The Challenge of
Leadership in African Development”, reference was made to the fact that in
the closing quarter of the 20th century, Africa finds itself in a debt overhang
equivalent to 44 per cent of its gross domestic product. If the continent is to
recover from this debt overhang and confront the twenty first century
unencumbered by debt, hunger, poverty disease and ignorance, it needs
leaders who are strong and self-confident, creators of great ideas who are
able to command the loyalty of their people and who are totally committed
to the development of their countries and to the imperative for peace and
brotherhood among nations. Such leaders, in turn, must be able to mobilize
and commit their people to a programme of honest, hard work, relying on
the sweat of their own labours to improve the quality of their own lives.
President Babangida observed that, throughout history, nations without
strong leaders have had no enduring philosophy and have remained
vulnerable to external pressure.

Consequently, Africa needs today a systematic examination of the failures of

past and current African leadership in the development process. Equally,
there should be a recognition of the imperative for sustained high-level
training of potential African leaders to ensure a process of orderly, inter-
generational succession.

This trend of thought was carried one step further in the keynote address by
General Olusegun Obasanjo, entitled “Africa in Today’s World”, in which
he tried to define the new context in which African leaders have to operate.
That context derives from the demise, in the early 1980s of the international
economic order that evolved after World War II. The presently emerging
world constellation is not only characterized by the importance and
preponderance of the developed world but also by the growing significance
of the countries of the Asia-Pacific Rim, particularly Taiwan, the Republic
of Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. Disappointingly, it also depicts the
increasing marginalization of the whole of Africa, particularly the sub-
Saharan region. This marginalization is a function of the fact that this region
has remained one of the most unreconstructed economies, where production
processes have been frozen within colonial moulds. International
indebtedness brought the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

5
into Africa in a manner unparalleled anywhere else in the post-war world.
These organizations now determine the tenor and tempo of the development
of many African countries. Everywhere, the evidence is of a continent in
dereliction and decay, rapidly becoming “the third world of the Third
World”.

But the position is far from hopeless: General Obasanjo suggested four areas
where African leaders could begin to transform the circumstances of their
countries and the whole continent. First, African leaders have to stimulate
creativity in their peoples through establishing social institutions which
make for a humane society. Second, African leaders must endow political
institutions and political processes with the requisite democratic content so
as to guarantee their necessary legitimacy and safeguard them against
violent overthrow. Third, African leaders must review their present
organization as nation-states and strive towards new forms of larger,
regional economic associations with the aim of political union. Lastly,
African leaders must pursue serious scientific and technological
development through encouraging the flowering of indigenous talents,
experts, and intellectuals inside and outside their national universities. To
pursue these goals as vigorously as the situation demands, General Obasanjo
concluded by calling for more purposeful and regular economic summits of
African leaders and the establishment of the necessary machinery to follow
up on the decisions of such summits.

In his presentation, Professor Adebayo Adedeji further elaborated on the

perilous economic situation in Africa today. He sees African economic
everywhere as having suffered a systemic collapse caused by low
productivity, lack of co-operation and collective self-reliance among African
countries, and a high level of dependence on a Europe which is becoming
more and more inward-looking and more and more determined that Europe
is its own best market. The answer to the situation is not a mindless
structural adjustment of the type currently being initiated in one African
country after another. Certainly, what is required is not a structural
adjustment which, even with a human face, leads to the closing down of
schools and hospitals whilst leaving what remains with no books or drugs.
What Africa needs is a serious structural transformation constructed on
greatly increased per capita productivity which seeks, as a first step, to end
the era of hunger in a continent where only 20 per cent of cultivable land is
at present under cultivation.

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In confronting the present economic malaise in Africa, Dr. Tariq Husain, the
Resident Representative of the World Bank in Nigeria, called attention to the
continued relevance of three challenges that Sir Arthur Lewis had posed to
African leaders as far back as 1968. These were: (a) to strive to raise the
domestic savings rate to 30 per cent of gross national product (no African
country has achieved a rate of over 20 per cent: Nigeria in the mid-1980s
achieved only 10 per cent, Ghana 8 per cent, and Zambia 13 per cent); (b) to
invest heavily in the production of secondary (including technical) school
graduates; and (c) to reduce drastically the parasitical growth of employment
in the public sector. The failure to face up to these challenges is a pre-
eminent cause of the current predicament on the continent. Yet, in any
attempt to resolve the problems today, four new elements need to be taken
into account. First, more than ever before, African leaders must strive to
eliminate absolute poverty in their countries through setting targets for more
equitable income distribution. At present, income distribution in Africa is
strongly skewed in favour of the rich. An income distribution target whereby
at least 7.5 per cent of national income accrues to the bottom 30 per cent, as
against the present 2.5 – 3.5 per cent, is something that could be aimed for
by the year 2000. Second, all sections of society should be assured of
adequate nutrition through a food security programme which not only makes
food available but promotes the financial ability of households to acquire it.
Third, educational opportunities need to be enhanced both in the broad
sense, i.e., with due regard for human rights, and in the narrow sense, i.e.,
education for increased productivity. Fourth, environmental resources must
be conserved through reducing the rate of population growth, rationalizing
the rate of exploitation of natural resources and being more vigilant in
matters of pollution control in respect of both internally generated wastes
and attempts to make the continent a dumping ground for toxic waste from
developed countries. In all of these, African leaders need a revolution of
perceptions and of approach, particularly in respect of rules that direct
intergovernmental relationships for greater co-operation and negotiated
progress.

On the issue of co-operation and negotiated progress, the paper by D.

Donatien Bihute, Chairman of the Meridien Bank of Burundi, was
particularly instructive. He observed that after 30 years of independence and
collective commitment to achieving economic integration, inter-African
trade still accounts for only 5 per cent of the continent’s trade flows. Apart
from external interference and sabotage, the main reasons for this state of
affairs are the predominance of political and short-sighted considerations in

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the decision-making process and the lack of effective legal and
administrative mechanisms to support and activate the main economic
operators, especially from the private sector. To rectify the situation, he
suggests political security and sound economic policies in each country;
faith in the future of the continent and its constituent countries through
investing in them; and improvement in general accessibility and
communication networks as preconditions for facilitating multi-country co-
operation involving the private sector. Given the above, the private sector in
African countries can foster more effective co-operation if common tariffs
and collective trade protections are instituted by sub-regional groupings
against outsiders. Such groupings can engage in joint ventures in trade and
industry and promote economic growth through greater interaction among
national chambers of commerce. More importantly, they can organize the
joint training of African managers, help them overcome linguistic barriers
and use national and sub-regional trade fairs to foster the exchange of views
and ideas for enhanced productivity. Finally, where trade imbalances result
from such co-operation, mechanisms to correct these can be put in place
through a special fund financed by the countries with positive surpluses.

The strategic urgency of seriously confronting the agricultural and rural

development challenges of the continent was presented in the paper by Prof.
Akin Mabogunje, Vice-Chairman of the Directorate of Food, Roads and
Rural Infrastructure, Office of the President, Nigeria. He argued that apart
from the conventional wisdom of how to stimulate agricultural and rural
development through price incentives of various types, much still remains to
be done to create the structural context in which African agriculture can be
truly modernized and its productivity greatly enhanced. Central to this would
be strategies to deal with the land tenure situation and bring it into
conformity with the market orientation of most of the institutions needed to
stimulate agricultural productivity. Such strategies need not entail expensive
modern land reform procedures, but could creatively use the community
context in which most farmers and farming groups still exist to determine
and register individual access to land in a manner acceptable to credit
institutions. The need to achieve congruency through the market mechanism
for access to all factors of agricultural production is the most pressing
challenge for African agriculture if it is to resolve rapidly the problems of
hunger, malnutrition and inadequate food supply in the continent.

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The final paper on the challenges of economic development was a review of
the lessons of experience with the development strategies pursued by
African and other developing countries since the end of World War II. It was
presented by Prof. A.M.A. Muhith, former Finance and Planning Minister of
Bangladesh. He observed that, up to 1975, there was an unflinching devotion
to economic growth and most developing countries, including many in
Africa, registered growth rates of at least 3 per cent per annum. Much of this
growth was promoted through transnational corporations, which were able to
bring together profitably four processes that dominated the period:
technological development; trade growth; cheap energy; and free capital
movement. In spite of these, weaknesses were recognized, especially in
developing countries where population growth remained largely
uncontrolled, the poverty of an increasing proportion of the population was
not checked, the environment was continuously assaulted and degraded, and
national economies were poorly managed.

From 1974 to 1985, therefore, these countries entered a period of payment

crisis caused by the crisis of the “there Fs”: fuel, food and fertilizers. This
was the period of hyperinflation, when country after country had to adopt
rigorous austerity measures. The developed countries got out of this situation
quickly as they were able to muster a new entrepreneurial spirit through
which individual initiative as well as new organizational structures broke
loose from the oligopolistic giant corporations; new technological advances
were made, especially those based on computer and information revolution;
inflation was kept in control and there was a substantial expansion of United
States’ exports to the world.

However, African and many other developing countries are still gripped in
the throes of paralyzing structural adjustment programmes. If they are to
return to the path of growth and development, there are a number of strategic
imperatives they must attend to. First, they must rise above doctrinaire
fanaticism and pay greater attention to implementation efficiency, selective
investment programmes, higher productivity and greater overall efficiency.
Second, they must operate their economies within flexible policy
frameworks rather than on the basis of the rigid comprehensive planning
format of conventional development plans. This would mean giving a
greater role to the market mechanism in setting prices, to enterprise and to
efficiency and to managing the national economy more through consultation
than direction. Third, they must intensify domestic resource mobilization
with emphasis on community efforts. Fourth, they must harness more energy

9
sources and give primacy to agriculture, which is required for overall
growth, to diverting surpluses to industrialization, to creating employment
opportunities and to generating demand in the economy. More than
anything, they must reduce their population growth rate and appreciate that
structural adjustment is likely to be long term rather than short term. Serious
attention must be given by every African country to negotiating viable
relationships with their development partners so as to create the environment
necessary to revitalize their economies and put them back on the path of
growth.

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 B. The Challenges of the International Economic
Environment

One whole day was devoted to enable Mr. Helmut Schmidt, former
Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, to give participants the
benefit of his views on the current international economic environment
within which African countries have to undertake the structural
transformation of their economies. Mr. Schmidt began by noting that the
structure of the world economy had become multi-polar. The size of the
poles, however, is not easily determined by superpower status. Thus,
although one may identify five superpowers at present in the world, their
economic significance varies considerably. The Soviet Union is a military or
strategic superpower but is neither an economic nor a financial one. Japan is
par excellence an economic and financial superpower, with the potential of
becoming a strategic superpower. It is noteworthy that one of the factors
responsible for the enormous upswing in Japan’s economic strength over the
last 30 years is the firm control it has placed on military spending, keeping
this down to no more than one per cent of its gross national product. The
United States is the major economic, financial and military superpower in
the world. Its current difficulties with the twin trade and budget deficits
could, however, be resolved by the end of the century. Europe as it is
envisaged in 1992 is also a potentially formidable economic superpower, but
the reluctance to establish a European monetary system or sacrifice more
individual national sovereignty could inhibit the full realization of this
potential. China can be seen as a superpower in ascendancy, currently
stronger in military and strategic than in economic terms.

Apart from these superpowers, there are the medium powers who can affect
the global economic situation for good or for ill. On the one hand are the
Asian countries such as Taiwan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Hong
Kong – the “four little tigers” On the other hand are the Middle Eastern
countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Israel, which among them can provoke
major international military confrontations. There are also the Latin
American countries, whose external indebtedness can also cause a
significant global crisis if not properly managed.

In spite of this multi-polar structure, the most significant feature of the

global economy is the highly integrated and interdependent nature of the
financial system that keeps it together. The impact of an event anywhere in

11
the world can be felt in the system within a few minutes. There are no longer
independent national stock markets which can be regulated and modulated
by national authorities. All markets are now one international financial
market, with no international authority to regulate its operation. The Bretton
Woods institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund or the World
Bank, have lost much of their impact in recent times.

By contrast, no such integrated markets exist for commodities and

foodstuffs, especially for oil or manufactured goods. And yet, these are the
products that dominate the economies of developing countries. Thus, it is not
clear what Third World countries mean when they press for a new
international economic order. Such an order is already emerging – though it
is not the type they want. The new order is the product of the reactions by
the developed countries to the two oil shocks of 1973-1974 and 1979. As a
result of the high oil prices most of these countries were able to invest in
alternative energy sources, particularly nuclear power. The result is their
increasing economic independence from raw material constraints and the
enormous flexibility of their markets to switch from one consumer product
to another.

For African countries in particular, this situation has meant a severe

marginalization of their economic importance, even for Europe. This fact
must be borne in mind in designing economic policies and programmes for
the period ahead. Its implications are many. First, the message from the
international economic environment, increasingly, that Africa is on its own
and must find its own way to salvation. At best, it can expect only official
development assistance from developed countries. Second, not much can be
expected from private financial institutions until present debts are retired.
All talks of debt repudiation by debtor countries are unhelpful and likely to
be self-defeating in the long run. The issue of debt overhang to private
financial institutions is indeed one area where there is considerable scope for
co-operative leadership in Africa. Thirdly, African and other developing
countries must take the issue of population control seriously. By the year
2000, the world population will be approximately 6 billion, of which only
800 million will be in the industrialized countries. It is unthinkable that this
latter group will shoulder the responsibility of developing the 5.2 billion
people in the rest of the world. Fourthly, African leaders must reduce their
defence expenditure and concentrate on investing in their nation’s
development. In some African countries, military spending is as high as 14
per cent of gross national product. This cannot be sustained. Fifthly, African

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countries must pursue a studied programme of diversification so that they
are not tied to just one market or one country or one product. They must find
ways of using their present reservoir of cheap labour to real economic
advantage. Like Asian countries, they must deliberately set out to discover
what they can produce cheaply and well to various foreign markets. Sixthly,
African countries must concentrate on improving their economic
management capacity. Great emphasis must be deliberately placed on
training in economics and business administration as well as on widespread
proficiency in the English language, which had emerged as the language of
global commerce and international economic relations. Finally, African
countries must be more circumspective about ideas and proposals coming
from foreign sources. They must examine these against the background of
their own cultural heritage and gradually build up confidence to be selective
in regard to foreign innovations which can serve to transform for the better
the socio-economic circumstances of the majority of their people.

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 C. The Challenges of Social and Cultural Development

The papers presented on the challenges of social and cultural development

emphasized the importance for African leaders to regain their pride and
confidence in the integrity of their cultural heritage. Dr. Pierre-Claver
Damiba, Assistant Administrator and Regional Director for Africa of the
United Nations Development Programme, while presenting a message from
the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, observed
that the development process in Africa, in many ways more than necessary,
had been rather more wasteful, more disruptive and more traumatic than
anywhere in the world. Perhaps this was because no thorough attention had
been paid to Africa’s cultural values and social institutions, even by Africans
themselves. Instead, Africans are confronted everywhere with negative
images of themselves and their societies. Thus, it is worth stressing that, like
other people, Africans cannot advance without a keen sense of their own
self-worth and without the constant reinforcement of this sense.

Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka further developed this theme with a
paper entitled: “Twice bitten: The fate of Africa’s culture producers”. He
began by emphasizing that culture is not a sum of parts but a summation and
synthesis of the entire life of a people. It encompasses not only objective
products and their interrelated activities but also the social psyche and the
basic life affirming elements of a people as they evolve, as they transform
the concept and manipulation of their environment and influence their
assessment, rejection or conciliation with alien encounters. For ex-colonial
territories, however, culture had become a slave to expertise, indentured to
alien training and its inevitable repercussions. This has made it easy for
Africans to accept transferred models of other people’s cultures, the products
of different, specific conditions of climate, social life-styles, economic
acceptance and even religious influences. Architectural programmes in most
African countries are easily the most visible area of the greatest failure in
terms of cultural enracination.

The challenge of cultural productivity requires that attention be paid to the

conditions of the producers of culture and their destiny at the hands of those
who direct affairs of state. In this connection, Africa and African leaders
stand self-indicted. There can be few African countries today where the
artistic and intellectual potential of the people has not been truncated in the
so-called process of nation-building. Many of these countries have
experienced the internal equivalent of a brain-drain through the wanton

14
imprisonment and sometimes murder of their writers, their poets, their
dramatists, their artists and the various intellectual producers of their culture.
Some have even gone so far as to have books burnt in the manner of the
medieval Inquisition in Europe. Everywhere, the story is a catalogue of the
betrayal of African culture by African leaders and the sacrifices have been
made as much by the masses as by the artists themselves and the
intelligentsia.

If Africa is to achieve real development and strive for a new and creative
dimension of national identification, then African leaders must seek new
inspiration through pursuing a vigorous policy of what Soyinka calls “race-
retrieval”. This involves the conscious activity of recovering what has been
hidden, lost, repressed, denigrated or indeed simply denied, not just by
Africans themselves, but certainly by the conquerors of African peoples and
their Eurocentric bias’ of thought and relationships. For if a people must
develop, they must have constant recourse to their own history – a crucial
component of their material art and culture – not only for inspiration but also
to retrieve the fount and spring- head of their creativity. African leaders must
therefore appreciate that the producers of this culture are not poor relatives
of development; efforts must be made to ensure that they are no longer
treated as front-line victims by those under the delusion of power, affected
by leadership alienation and paranoia at the pinnacle of state authority.

Professor Junzo Kawada of the Institute for the Study of the Languages and
Cultures of Asia and Africa based in Tokyo, Japan further explored the
theme of the relationship between development and culture. He noted that
the basic problem was how to relate the intrinsic cultural value of every
society with the inequalities seen in the degree of development of those
societies. Part of the answer must be that development cannot be considered
in terms of some universal criteria but is to be sought on the basis of the
cultural heritage of each society. In pursuing this line of thought, however, it
is necessary to recognize three points. First, that in the course of the general
global development of technology, a complete reversal is practically
impossible. There is no way a society living in the twentieth century can
reject all the conveniences that modern industrial civilization has brought the
world. Second, that in our modern age the peoples of both the so-called
developed and developing countries are contemporaries. Thus, irrespective
of their levels of development, these societies are confronted and concerned
with similar problems, such as urbanization, environmental degradation and
so on. Third, that the conditions that enabled traditional technology to

15
function appropriately in the past have changed and it is important to reject a
mere nostalgic and retrospective attachment to the “good old days”.

Professor Kawada then used the example of Japan to illustrate the

relationship between development and culture. He believes that the
phenomenal development of Japan can be traced back to three significant
elements of its cultural heritage. First, its linguistic unity, which made it easy
to absorb, disseminate and popularize new ideas and concepts among all of
the people. The second factor is the human-dependent character of Japanese
traditional technology. European technological orientation, Prof. Kawada
pointed out improves tools and instruments to obtain maximum result
independently of the user’s personal skill and to economize human labour
through exploiting non-human energy. In contrast to this, the technological
orientation of Japan is to make tools and instruments whose functional
efficiency depends heavily on the skill and manual dexterity of the user. This
orientation has had two contradictory consequences for Japanese industrial
development in modern times. Positively, it ensured that in the domain
where precise manual skills were important, such as in the textile industry,
the manufacturing of watches and bicycles, and later of cameras, transistor
radios and so forth, Japan was able to compete effectively with Western
countries. Negatively, however, Professor Kawada pointed out, in proportion
to its development in the applied aspects of sciences, Japan has made
astonishingly little original and creative contributions in the domain of
fundamental scientific research. Third, the traditional Japanese value system
has emerged over centuries of working on the limited available land with
great earnestness and assiduity. These values of old Japan made it easy to
absorb Western science and technology rapidly and to set the stage for
nationalistic industrialization, although it did restrain individual creative
activities.

It is, of course, too early to be sure of the direction of African technological

orientation but there is no doubt that it will be influenced by the fact that
African farmers loved, and still live, in open spaces, full of unknown
possibilities, using their wisdom with relatively high labour productivity.
This cultural heritage, the base for an emergent African development ethos,
will continued to form and be reformed in the course of history, through
contact with elements of foreign cultures. The danger however is not the
introduction of foreign elements but rather the idolization of one culture,
tendencies, which lead to ethnocentrism or xenophobia, and cultural
inferiority or superiority complexes. This is why Professor Kawada

16
suggested that African leaders should consider the value of “a triangulation
of cultures” to the multiplication of cultural points of reference as a means of
combining the ancestral wisdom of their people with ideas and cultural
experiences from a number of foreign sources to build a new and more
glorious future for their people.

Against this background, it was possible to appreciate the insistence of

Professor Alex Kwapong of Ghana, former Vice-Rector of the United
Nations University in Tokyo, that the main challenge of education in Africa
is to develop the human resources which will ensure accelerated
development and modernization without compromising Africa’s cultural
identity. He noted that the expansion of primary school enrolments in Africa,
particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, might have been unparalleled in
any time or place in history. Yet, for all that, there are areas of educational
expansion that require urgent attention. There is, for instance, a need for a
more equitable distribution of educational opportunities and the reduction of
existing inequalities based on sex, economic status and geography. There is
also the need to improve the internal and external efficiency of the
educational system as a first step towards improving the quality of education
and high cognitive achievements by students. Internal efficiency entail
arresting the decline in the supplies of key inputs into the educational system
at all levels – including such basic materials as books and other learning
materials – as well as ensuring serious administrative action relating to the
flow of students, class size and the use of space and facilities. External
efficiency requires an increase in the relevance of schooling to the job
market and making certain that students are equipped with the knowledge
and skills needed to find employment in an increasingly competitive and
changing milieu.

For such educational transformation to take place in the current

circumstances of most African countries, three policy remedies are
suggested. First, African leaders must pay greater attention to the adjustment
of current demographic rates of growth to the fiscal realities of their
countries. Second, there is a need to revitalize the existing educational
infrastructure, giving special emphasis not just to science and technology but
also to the integration of traditional and emerging technologies. Third, a
programme of selective expansion in all three sectors should be pursued
through renewed progress towards long-term goals of universal primary
education and the improvement of quality in the secondary and tertiary

17
sectors. Particularly in the case of the tertiary sector, such improvements can
be fostered through the identification of selected, nodal centres where a
critical mass of teachers, researchers and practitioners can be brought
together.

In all of this, the overall political environment is of prime importance. The

prevalent political instability and the near-collapse state of the economy of
most African countries have precipitated a massive internal and external
brain-drain. As the position begins to improve, African leaders, through the
type of political climate they provide, must resolve the twin challenges of
attracting back from abroad the skilled professionals, scientists, scholars and
researchers and adding to and retaining all those being produced in the
various institutions of higher learning and research in the continent.

The crucial importance of the political environment of social change in the

health sector was further highlighted in a presentation by Professor Thomas
Lambo, former Deputy Director-General of the World Health Organization.
Professor Lambo called attention to the frightening dehumanization going on
presently in most African countries as a result of the current economic crisis.
He noted the rise in the rate of infant mortality and the level of malnutrition,
especially among vulnerable groups in the population at the same time as
health institutions were being denuded of vital drugs and medications and
skilled and highly trained manpower. Yet, in planning to redress the
situation, it is important to bear in mind that health is not just the absence of
infirmity and disease but a state of complete physical, mental and social
well-being. Against such a definition, it is necessary to re-examine the
complete dependence of African governments on Western-type medical
tradition, with its philosophical underpinnings in the rational materialism
and scientific empiricism deriving from the Renaissance period. The fact
that alternative medical traditions with equal efficacy do exist is perhaps best
brought out by the Chinese medical tradition with its emphasis on
acupuncture. Given the abundance of vegetal species in Africa, African
governments need to give urgent attention to verifying and validating the
healing capabilities of African traditional medicine. This is an area where
the call is to innovate, not imitate. Indeed, the World Health Organization
has given the lead in this matter and its Division on Traditional Medicine has
taken decisive strides in various directions. This has not always been easy;
especially as such achievements were made in the face of strong opposition
by large, transnational corporations in the pharmaceutical industry.
Nonetheless, the current economic situation in most African countries

18
presents African leaders with an unparalleled opportunity to fall back
decisively not only on the product of their environment but on the
technological and medical resources of their cultural heritage.

19
 D. The Challenges of the South African Situation

The challenges that the South African situation constituted for African
leaders were well summarized in the presentations by both Dr. Ntatho
Motlana, Founder and Co-Chairman of the Soweto Crisis Committee, and
the Rev. Stanley Mogoba, President of the South African Institute of Race
Relations and Secretary of the Conference of the Methodist Church of
Southern Africa. The presentations outlined clearly the nature of the problem
and provided a historical serialization of attempts to resolve it. Basically, the
problem is the dispossession and displacement of Africans during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from their lands through the greater
violence of the foreigner’s gun when pitched against the African spear.
Apartheid, as a racial policy, should therefore not be seen as dating back
only to the time the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948 but it originated
as far back as 336 years ago, during the Dutch occupation of the Cape. As a
policy, it was equally espoused by the British, who presided over the all-
white National Convention in 1908, in which the Union of the four
provinces of South Africa was decided, and who also authorized the Act of
Union in 1910. Soon after that Union – by 1913 – the Government of South
Africa was already declaring that 87 per cent of the land belonged to whites
only. After four years of negotiating and organizing, the African National
Congress was established in 1912. It immediately drew up a petition to the
British Government to protest against the white union and the grabbing of
almost all of the land. No redress was forthcoming.

The period since 1912 has thus witnessed different phases in the struggle to
reverse this situation and make the African no longer a foreigner in his own
land. Five such phases were identified:

(a.) The Negotiation Phase) 1912-1950) when the African National

Congress sought a democratic and peaceful solution to the
problem;

(b) The Positive Non-Violent Action Phase (1950-1960) when, under

the leadership of Chief Albert Luthuli, a defiance campaign was
mounted, resulting in the first treason trials;

20
 (c) The Violence Phase (1960-1970) which witnessed such violent
incidents as the Sharpeville Riot, the Pass Campaign, the Podo and
the Rivonia Uprisings;

(d) The Youth Revolt Phase (1970-1980) which culminated in the

Soweto uprisings and the banning of the Black Consciousness
Movement; and

(e) The Phase of New Organizations and New Leaders (since 1980).

Whilst apartheid has continued to be entrenched in the life of South Africa

through a process of state terrorism, it has provoked reactions not only
among the blacks but also among the whites. Among the blacks, the most
striking feature of present resistance is the multi-dimensional character of its
leadership, embracing not only those exiled or imprisoned but also the
church, labour movement, internal opposition groups, homeland and youth
leaders. This diversity of leadership presents problems of communication
and dialogue, especially within the country. A state of political impasse
seemed to have been reached internally.

A new initiative is expected through international leverage on the situation,

especially leverage carefully worked out by African leaders and enjoying
superpower support. Not much can be expected for now from the cosmetics
of unscrambling apartheid by state President Botha nor from the liberation
movements. Careful diplomacy and negotiation skills by committed African
leadership would appear to hold the greatest hope for the immediate future.
Things look bleak, grim and gloomy in the medium and long terms if serious
negotiations are not embarked upon soon.

21
 E. The Challenges of Policy Formation

One of the most serious failings of leadership in the present circumstances of

Africa is the lack of vigorous economic discussions on the policy scene.
Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory
Committee, Office of the President of Nigeria presented a paper to explore
the challenges of policy formation using the example of Nigeria.

Professor Aboyade began his presentation by noting the enormous structural

problems of development in Africa and their implications. This has meant
that the policy maker does not choose his starting point, no matter how
differently he might have wanted it. Development, however, is a process
almost daunting in its complexity. As such, it is important to stress the
dangers of individuals coming into government and into policy prescription
with a very naïve view of what is realizable and with a heavy baggage of
populist sentiments. Professor Aboyade then dealt with the challenges of
policy formation in three parts, namely the nature and structure of public
policy, the historical setting for policy-making in Africa and some recent
attempts at policy reform in Nigeria.

On the nature and structure of public policy, Professor Aboyade began by

noting that policy formation for underdeveloped countries such as Nigeria
must necessarily be seen in a holistic context; that is, the complex
interdependence of targets and instruments in all segments of the economy
operating simultaneously. It invariably involves large numbers of
technocrats, bureaucrats, opinion moulders, political leaders, pressure
groups, special interests and social activities for whom the time required for
initiating or getting results from particular policies varies enormously. Thus,
time is probably the most severe constraint that policy-makers have to
confront in an underdeveloped society. The speed of reaction to given policy
measures is not only often slow, long and unpredictable, it invariably gets
lost in the dynamics of intervening exogenous events.

The core of policy formation is rigorous economic analysis. Good training in

economics is thus essential for a nation’s team of economic advisers and
bureaucrats, since it is through objective economic analysis that the
quantitative effects of a given measure can be discovered i.e., how large are
the expected results and how long might they take to work themselves out;
whether there are other alternative measures which might more effectively

22
and efficiently achieve the goals being sought; or whether there are other
side effects which either help or hinder the attainment of a given policy
objective. Good training in development economics thus facilitates the
capacity in a policy-maker to rise above the various pressures and criticisms
of the moment in a relentless pursuit of his objectives, unless there is no
social consensus about what those objectives are.

Nonetheless, although economics remains the core of policy formation, its

boundaries are constrained by the historical and social conditions of a given
nation and the global context of continuous economic and political
interaction. In the African situation, the colonial experience until recently
detached the region from the general development process. Beyond creating
markets for imported industrial products and procuring sources of tropical
products and raw materials for metropolitan factories, colonialism resulted
in a structural dualism and the heightening of fragmentation in African
economies. Its negative consequences included the stagnation in agricultural
productivity in products other than the primary exports, the almost complete
absence of industrialization, the poor state of social infrastructure, the
underdevelopment of peasant agriculture and the food economy, the neglect
of human resource development at the grass roots, indifference to serious
entrepreneurial efforts in the population and the almost total failure to
develop indigenous, self-sustaining capacity for economic analysis and
national economic management.

It took the turbulence of the 1970s in the world markets for primary
commodities (especially with respect to crude petroleum, tin, copper,
beverages and vegetable oil) to completely unmask the severe fragility and
external dependence of African economies. This fragility was made more
precarious by a political leadership and party machinery, which, though
filled with dogma and rhetoric, often lacked the basic economic control of
the state. The results have been the rise of the informal or parallel markets,
loss of Government revenues, rapid accumulation of heavy external debts,
the real economy running away from the Government’s administrative
control and policy instruments, increased unstructured and illegal ways of
operating business while earned incomes and policy formation were seen
increasingly in terms of political importance and discretionary patronages,
rather than in terms of their long-term value to sustained economic
development and social welfare.

23
Not unexpectedly, most African economies collapsed. In the past seven
years, they have all been forced to introduce stabilization and structural
adjustment measures aimed at national economic recovery as a pre-condition
for the resumption of growth and development. In Nigeria, this situation has
been used not only to promote policy reforms but also to begin to face
seriously the long-term developmental challenges of the country.

The lessons of the Nigerian experience in policy reform stress the need for
African leaders to ask serious questions about the essence of the
development process and of the system of production relations required to
promote it. In striving to outline a new paradigm for African structural
transformation, it must be recognized that the core of a permanent and
sustainable development process is to achieve a major, significant shift in
per capita physical productivity in a country. The cumulative effect of such a
shift will provide the national economy with the structural flexibility and
management capacity to confront shocks, whether such shocks originate
externally or internally. Starting from this period of difficult transition,
African leaders must promote widespread economic education in their
countries, bearing in mind that structural problems cannot be wished away
and that there are no easy choices that do not involve sweat and courage.

24
 III. Group Discussions

The participants at this first programme of the Africa Leadership Forum

were assigned into two groups. The first group discussed the political and
strategic issues arising from the various presentations, noting in particular
their implications for leadership in African countries, the types of problems
that confront them and the strategies that can be suggested to deal with these
problems. The second group focused on economic and social issues.

A. Political and Strategic Issues

Under its Chairman, Dr. Francis Deng, the group noted that in any country,
leadership must be considered very broadly. It embraces not only political
leaders at all levels of Government – national, state, provincial, district and
local – but also the youth, women, and leaders of the community, academia
and of business. One must also add leaders in public service and the military.
Nonetheless, participants observed that, although the challenges of
leadership were essentially of the same nature, the performance of leadership
at the national level had implications for all other categories of leadership,
both internally and at the international level.

In the African context, there were a number of problems that have vitiated
the effectiveness of leadership. These include the problems of corruption at
all levels, the people’s mistrust of the leaders and a general attitude of
cynicism towards leadership effort. With respect to corruption, it was
suggested that one reason for this was that the leaders in Africa often have to
relate to two categories of the public. On the one hand, there is the private
circle of the ethnic or extended family group, friends and supporters, who
usually profit from the corrupt practices of their members and therefore
encourage them. On the other hand, there is the general public, which
usually surfaces where such corrupt practices go hand in hand with a
contemptuous disregard for public opinion. Although they are in the public
eye almost twenty-four hours a day, many African leaders show such a poor
sense of accountability that the basis for trust hardly exists. The result is a
paralyzing cynicism among the people as to the intentions of government.
This has made it difficult for most African leaders to mobilize their
population or to pursue effective policies that would require commitment
and acceptance by their respective societies. It has also encouraged the
persistence of a negative perception of the ability of society to resolve its
problems by itself.

25
All of this emphasizes the need for African leaders to develop institutions
that can translate political independence to broad-based popular democracy
and liberty. African leaders must encourage the emergence in their societies
of broad-based mechanisms which can accommodate dissent without
undermining the upsurge of the creative energies of the people for social and
economic development. Such mechanisms would entail greater concern for
an equitable and impartial balance of interests as a means of breaking down
ethnic, cultural and religious barriers in the country. According to the group,
gross violations of human rights and repression are antithetical to the
purposes of development and nation-building. African leaders must rise
above factionalism and strive to foster the growth of internal consensus in
their country by breaking down various forms of community barriers. Only
then would they have begun, in the words of General Obasanjo, “the process
of endowing political institutions with the necessary legitimacy which is
their ultimate safeguard against violent overthrow”.

The group considered various strategies that may help in sensitizing African
leaders to the moral imperatives of leadership by checking their abuse of
power and fostering the values of respect for the will of the people and their
human dignity. It recognizes that a fundamental tenet of such strategies is
that people know their rights. Education and public enlightenment are thus
paramount to this process – not just any type of education, however. The
group noted what it calls “the crisis of knowledge discontinuity” in Africa,
whereby indigenous knowledge and traditions are regarded as marginal and
irrelevant to the process of development and nation-building when compared
to imported theories and practices. Yet, such imported ideas tend to
marginalize African masses, erode their self-confidence and participatory
relevance and undermine their resourcefulness in the development process.
It was therefore agreed that the requisite educational programme for
encouraging people to know their rights must be one built on their own
cultural values and one which employs to the fullest the resources of
proverbs, sayings and imagery in the local language. This will facilitate
effective communication with the people and reinforce the moral and
cultural basis of their expectations and the obligations of leaderships in
meeting those expectations.

Furthermore, it was felt that an important strategy for real leadership

development is greater emphasis on local government, encouraging a return
to the autonomy and self-reliance of local communities and reducing the
overwhelming and stultifying presence of the central government. In this

26
regard, it was noted that there was in many African countries an unnecessary
parsimony in the number of local government councils, their individual area
of jurisdiction too large for real and effective governance.

Related to the need for greater and more broad-based local autonomy is the
importance of improving data collection processes, right down to the grass
roots as a means of enhancing the basis of sound policy decision-making.

One other strategy for improving the quality of leadership in Africa is for
leaders to have regular “sessions of introspection” to review performance
and the general direction of governance. Along with such regular retreat
should go some unobtrusive form of education and training for leaders,
especially with respect to international economic relations so that African
leaders can become increasingly self-assertive in their enlightened pursuits
of Africa’s interest in the global arena.
In this connection, it was indicated that African countries and their leaders
have paid less than adequate attention as to how their foreign policy should
feed into their economic purposes. This is perhaps understandable as long as
Africa comprises so many small and highly dependent countries. But as the
imperative of regional economic (and possibly political) integration is better
appreciated, it becomes urgent that African leaders see Africa as the center-
piece of their foreign policy.

B. Economic and social issues

The discussion began with attempts at better appreciating the nature of the
current economic crisis in Africa, particularly as it relates to the problem of
the debt overhang. There were views that it should be possible for African
countries to act in concert, either to repudiate the debts or at least secure a
debt relief or consolidation (another word for longer-term rescheduling).
Following Mr. Helmut Schmidt’s presentation, four categories of debts were
recognized:

(a) Those owed to states or to state banks;

(b) Those guaranteed by a government or governmental financial
institutions of the creditor countries;
(c) Those in which the debtor is a firm or government from a
developing country while the creditor is a private bank in the
developed country; and

27
 (d) Debts where the creditor is a private enterprise in the developed
country.

Each of these categories needs to be considered differently. Whilst one can

conceive of debt relief (or forgiveness) in respect of the first category, it is
not wise to press for it in respect of the other three since this could have
considerable implications for the profitability or cash flow of creditors and
might make them less willing to engage in the flow of investible funds to
developing countries. A more realistic approach in these cases is to press for
re-scheduling or the lowering of the interest rate or the prolongation of the
repayment time frame.

One reason for approaching the issue of debt settlement with greater
circumspection is the prognosis that the volume of investment funds likely to
be available for transfer to developing countries in the foreseeable future is
bound to be considerably reduced. For one thing, the era of recycling
superabundant petro-dollars is gone forever. For another, the position of the
United States or other developed countries in attracting investment funds is
unlikely to be matched by developing countries, particularly in view of the
latter’s’ history of political instability and their fragile economic structures.
In all these, the role of OPEC is likely to be one of diminishing importance.
After eight years of acting as an economic “superpower” and raising oil
prices to very high levels, OPEC has created a situation in which
industrialized countries have developed alternative sources of energy to such
an extent that OPEC will never again be in a position to exercise comparable
leverage.

Under these circumstances, African leaders must review their basic

economic strategies. They must develop a more positive, though not
necessarily complacent, approach to multinational corporations, which
remain major sources of investible funds in developing countries. They must
design and vigorously pursue new strategies of export promotion, seeking
out those products and markets where their countries have decisive
comparative advantages. They must also pay considerable attention to
environmental issues, particularly those of toxic pollution whilst
concentrating research and development efforts on non-palliative sources of
energy, particularly solar energy. More importantly, African leaders must
start to give serious thought to regional and sub regional economic
integration and to significant reduction of expenditure on arms and

28
armaments as major pre-requisites for ensuring the long-term development
of the continent.

Of more immediate urgency is the need for African leaders to work

relentlessly towards ensuring food security for the populations of their
individual countries. The current food and nutrition situation in Africa calls
for new, imaginative and, above all, practical policy initiatives. Such actions,
the group noted, are feasible through programmes of farmer co-operatives
integrated with agro-industrial enterprises. Efforts should be directed at the
complete involvement of local farmers, avoiding their displacement and
offering them maximum encouragement and incentives.

Nonetheless, whether in regard to internal developmental challenges or

external economic relations, the group felt that African countries,
individually, but particularly collectively, do not have the necessary
institutional capacity to facilitate understanding and develop analytical and
negotiating capabilities for coping with the array of problems emanating
from these sources. It was the view of the group that Africa must take a leaf
from the experience of other nations and begin to equip itself now with the
intellectual and scientific capacity as well as the requisite knowledge base to
formulate long-term strategies, analyse economic and social issues correctly,
and implement such policies with the necessary political vision.

The group observed that, unlike other parts of the world, Africa at present
has no high-level think tanks, no institutes or centres for long-range studies,
policy formulation and analysis. As a first step, the group recommended that
the Forum initiate action and seek possible assistance or collaborative efforts
in creating an African Centre or Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies.

Such a center or institute should be a think tank with a small, highly

professional staff of, say, three dozen social scientists and policy experts in
other disciplines, equipped with the necessary financial resources, and up-to-
date library and research facilities. It must enjoy the general support or
goodwill of African governments, but have only minimal direct government
involvement. Such a high-quality institution, dedicated to policy formulation
and analysis, would be a crucial first step for African nations to acquire the
necessary institutional and intellectual development tools.

29
The group reviewed some past and current attempts to bring about similar or
related institutions in the region. It was particularly delighted to note and
accept the offer of its Chairman, Mr. Pierre-Claver Damiba, for the UNDP to
provide the necessary support and seed money to undertake a plan of action
for the envisaged Centre or Institute. The benefits to be derived from such an
institution would be long term, but the Group urged the Forum to take the
decision now to bring it about.

30
 IV. CONCLUSIONS

The wide range of issues that were thoroughly discussed at the inaugural
programme of the Africa Leadership Forum led to a number of suggestions
that have been highlighted above. The following eight conclusions are
however worthy of special mention.

1. It was generally agreed that the external environment within which

African countries must now plan their development can no longer
be regarded as benign. Even when the global economy recovers
fully from its recession, it will no longer be possible to envisage
ample resources of the type available in the 1970s through the
recycling of petro-dollars. The signal from the international
community is that Africa is now on its own. There may be
humanitarian assistance of various types, but the volume of aid or
even of investment flows to the continent can be expected to be
very much less than that in the recent past.

2. Since the rest of the world is no longer particularly interested in

Africa, the message to African leader is clear. They must learn to
devise and design strategies and programmes of self-reliant
development. Assiduity in achieving a higher degree of debt relief
may help their economy to some degree but only sustained
increase in per capita productivity can make a lasting impact. To
achieve this, African leaders must pay more serious attention to
reducing significantly the rate of population growth as well as
maintaining, and even enhancing the quality of their environment.

3. Sustained, increased productivity cannot be attained so long as

political instability prevails in African countries. Military coups
and threats of coups do not encourage the flow of investment
capital, nor do they reassure resident enterprises to reinvest in the
country. The position is not helped by the glaring disregard for
human rights, especially those of highly trained personnel who are
then made to flee their countries. This massive brain drain, the
result of political instability, becomes very detrimental to
development since the loss often has to be made up by the costly
importation of foreign expertise to advise African governments.

31
4. One other factor that African leaders have to consider seriously in
striving to improve their national performance in development is
military expenditure. Considering their gross national product,
most African governments spend an extremely high proportion of
their annual budget on defence. This must be drastically revised. It
is instructive that one element in the success story of Japanese
development in the last four decades is the very small fraction of
national expenditure devoted to defence.

5. All African economies are correctly going through a structural

adjustment programme designed either by the International
Monetary Fund or worked out by the countries themselves. It is
important, however, for African leaders to recognize that these
programmes are generally short-term in scope. They should not be
allowed to compromise the long-term interests of development.
This is why it is vital to ensure that the policy package under a
structural adjustment programme is compatible with the
achievement of increasing structural transformation and the
cumulative growth of the national economy. Structural
transformation requires an increasing use of local resources, local
technological skills and indigenous cultural values. One area where
such a shift of development emphasis could be critical is, for
instance, in health delivery services. Any programme of achieving
health for all within the shortest possible time can be only on the
basis of the fullest and most rational utilization of all available
systems of health care delivery in a country, whether western or
traditional.

6. Another important element in achieving such structural

transformation and cumulative economic growth is a vigorous
programme of food production and rural development based on the
effective mobilization of rural communities. Such broad-based
grass-roots mobilization equally has tremendous implications for
the growth of democratic institutions and the political distribution
of power. It encourages the emergence of a large number of local
leaders directly accountable to the people. This helps to strengthen
the calibre, competence and quality of the leadership that will
eventually emerge at the national level.

32
7. Whilst the improvement in the quality of education and the number
of those educated are important factors in enhancing leadership
capacity, there is a need to emphasize the increasing acquisition of
economic or business expertise for all those aspiring to be leaders
in African countries. This is not only because national
development is the single most important challenge confronting
African leaders today, but also because it must be tackled in an
international milieu that exacts harsh penalties for shoddy
economic thinking or failure to perceive and exploit economic
advantages. In an increasingly competitive and interdependent
world, where the language of international relations is couched
more and more in the idioms of bargaining and negotiations, a
good knowledge of economics provides African leaders with the
facility of comprehension and the ability to appreciate better where
the national interest lies in the welter of complex and conflicting
options.

8. The situation in South Africa is a challenge to all African leaders.

This challenge must be addressed, however, not only on the basis
of the current liberation struggle, but also in preparation for a post-
apartheid South Africa. It was agreed that strategies should be
evolved through governmental and non-governmental channels to
ensure that African contributions to the final resolution of the
conflict are orchestrated in such ways that African interests cannot
be marginalized or ignored in the subsequent reconstruction and
reconstitution of forces in the country.

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 LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

CHAIRMAN: General Olusegun OBASANJO

A. LECTURERS/PANELISTS

1. Ojetunji ABOYADE (Nigeria), Professor and Chairman, Pai Associates

2. Chief Simeon O. ADEBO (Nigeria), former Permanent Representative to the
United Nations, New York and Executive Director, United Nations Institute
of Training and Research (UNITAR)
3. Adebayo ADEDEJI (Nigeria), Under-Secretary-General of the United
Nations and Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for
Africa (ECA)
4. Tariq HUSAIN (PAKISTAN), Representative of the World Bank in Nigeria.
5. Junzo KAWADA (Japan), Professor, Institute for the Study of Languages and
Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo.
6. Alexander A. KWAPONG, (Ghana), Lester Pearson Chair for Development
Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada; former Vice-Rector, United
Nations University, Tokyo
7. Thomas A. LAMBO (Nigeria), President, Lambo Foundation for the
Advancement of Biomedical and Bio-behavioural Sciences; former Deputy
Director-General, World Health Organisation
8. Flora LEWIS (USA), Columnist, The New York Times.
9. Akin L. MABOGUNJE (Nigeria), Professor, Pai Associates; Pro-Chancellor
and Chairman of Council, Ogun State University, Ago-Iwoye
10. Ntatho MOTLANA (South Africa), President-Founder, Soweto Crisis
Committee and Chairman, Get-Ahead Foundation
11. A.M.A. MUHITHA (Bangladesh), Former Finance and Planning Minister
12. Col. Raji RASAKI (Nigeria), Military Governor of Lagos State.
13. Helmut SCHMIDT (Federal Republic of Germany,) Former Federal
Chancellor
14. Wole SOYINKA (Nigeria), Nobel Prize Winner 1986 for Literature
15. J.U. AIRE (Nigeria), Executive Director, A.G. Leventis and Co. (Nig.)
Limited.
16. A. ANATHARAMAN (India), Managing Director, Tower Aluminum
(Nigeria) Ltd.

B. PARTICIPANTS

1. Malam Yaya ABUBAKAR (Nigeria), former Permanent Secretary, Political

Department, Cabinet Office
2. P. Ayangma AMANG (Cameroon), Directeur-General, Compagnie Nationale
d’Assurances C.N.A.
3. Babafemi BADEJO (Nigeria), Senior Lecturer, University of Lagos.
4. Donatien BIHUTE (Burundi), Managing Director Hydrobur; Chairman,
Meridien Bank Burundi; former Minister of Planning of Burundi and Vice-
President, African Development Bank
5. Cecil BLAKE (Sierra Leone), Senior Programme Officer, Global Learning
Division, United Nations University, Tokyo

34
6. Munirul CHOUDHURY (Bangladesh), President, Aegean Maritime
International, Washington, D.C.; former Adviser to the President of
Bangladesh
7. Pierre-Claver DAMIBA (Burkina Faso), Assistant Administrator and
Regional Director for Africa, UNDP
8. Francis M. DENG (Sudan), former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs;
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
9. Julien DOBONGNA (Cameroon), Conseiller du President,Compagnie
Financiere et Industrielle
10. Jens FISCHER (Federal Republic of Germany), Chief of Staff, Office of Mr.
Helmut Schmidt
11. Jean HERSKOVITS (USA), Professor of African History, State University of
New York.
12. Ahmadu JALINGO (Nigeria) Dean, Faculty of Management and Social
Sciences, Bayero University, Kano.
13. Mansur KHALID (Sudan), former Foreign Minister and Vice-Chairman,
World Commission on Environment and Development
14. Justin LABINJOH (Nigeria), Senior Lecturer, University of Ibadan
15. Zamani LEKWOT (Nigeria), Major-General (rtd.), former Governor of
Rivers State, former Nigerian Ambassador to Senegal
16. L.B.B.J. MACHOBANE (Lesotho), Minister of Education
17. Rev. M. Stanley MOGOBA (South Africa), President, South African Institute
of Race Relations ;and Secretary of the Conference of the Methodist Church
of Southern Africa
18. Viktor M.P. MPOYO (Nigeria), Industrialist (oil industry)
19. Dragoljub NAJMAN (Yugoslavia), former Assistant Director-General,
UNESCO
20. Lopo Fortunato do NASCIMENTO (Angola), Governor of Huila Province;
former Prime Minister and Deputy Executive Secretary, ECA
21. Letitia OBENG (Ghana), former Regional Director for Africa, United Nations
Environment Programme
22. Anezi N. OKORO (Nigeria), Professor of Medicine, University of Nigeria
Teaching Hospital, Enugu
23. James ONOBIONO (Cameroon), President, Compagnie Financiere et
Industrielle
24. Hans D’ORVILLE (Federal Republic of Germany), Senior Officer, UNDP
New York and Coordinator, InterAction council Secretariat
25. Oyeleye OYEDIRAN (Nigeria), Professor, University of Lagos
26. Tayo SERIKI (Nigeria), Chairman, Siemens Nigeria
27. Albert TEVOEDJIRE (Benin) President, Centre Panafricain de Prospective
Sociale; former Deputy Director-General, International Labour Organisation
28. Bilikisu YUSUF (Nigeria), Editor, New Nigerian
29. Terencia LEON-JOSEPH (Peru), Administrative Assistant

35
 Appendix II

List of Statements and Papers

1. The Challenge of Leadership African Gen. Ibrahim

Development Babangida

2. Africa Today’s World Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo

3. Message from the

Administrator of United Nations Pierre-Claver Damiba
Development Programme

4. Leadership Challenge for Tariq Husain

Improving the Economic and
Social Situation in Sub-Saharan
Africa

5. The African Economy: Adebayo Adedeji

Overview and prospects for
Recovery and sustained development

6. Development Strategies A.M.A. Muhith

- Lessons from Experience

7. Multi-Country Private Donatien Bihute

Sector Co-operation in Africa

8. The Interest of the Private Sector A. Anantharaman

in Leadership

9. Some Thoughts on African Leadership J.U. Aire

10. Agriculture, Rural Development and Akin L. Mabogunje

The Post-Colonial State in Africa

11. Local Government in Nigeria J. M. Olanipekun

12. The Challenge of Education in Africa A. A. Kwapong

36
13. The Problems of Managing Raji Rasaki
a Conurbation like Metropolitan Lagos

14. Leadership in an interdependent World Helmut Schmidt

and What is Expected from Africa

15. Twice Bitten: The Fate of Africa’s Wole Soyinka

Culture Producers

16. Development and Culture – Is Japan a Junzo Kawada

Model?

17. Policy Formation: A Case Study Ojetunji Aboyade

of Nigeria

18. Apartheid and Leadership Nthato Motlana

19. Apartheid and the Challenges of M. S. Mogoba

African Leadership

37