Clearly, the biggest problem facing the African continent today is the lack of leaders with clear vision for their country. Soon after wining elections, African leaders often lose their steam, as if they had spent all their energy on the elections. This cause them to lose their way also, after just a few weeks in power.
Politics is a tough course in Africa, I agree, but that does not mean that leaders should easily forget their duties when elected.
The vision of most African leaders, where it exist, is not clear enough for the people to follow. It fails to galvanise the people to work towards the attainment of a common goal.
Consequently, the road to economic progress is often blurred, with most ad hoc policies and projects by governments causing far more ripples in the already spongy economies. So what really is the vision of a nation? Just as in the corporate world, the vision of a nation is that guiding statement or principles that binds the people together and forge a common unity of purpose. With a clear national vision, politics does not become as divisive as it is in Africa today, and democracy becomes relevant to development. The vision of a nation is therefore crucial to national pride and development.
George Washington had a vision for America and ensured that the spirit of patriotism was inculcated in the people. Some people may hate American foreign policies and what America stands for, but the truth is that America has a vision that is driving the country forward. The vision of the country may trample on the rights of a few other countries but that is their vision and every American is proud to be an American! Not the case with Africans. An African country could have a very simple, but clear vision to match the economic success of another country by creating a workforce for the future. This would therefore be reflected not only in words by the people but would be backed by action, if only governments would swear by it.
When Kuwait's new emir took power his vision was to turn Kuwait into a Gulf-region financial hub, returning to its pre-oil discovery heritage as a center of trade. And it seems that that is what the country is striving to achieve even if critics think it will never happen. A vision could be that vivid mental image or a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and therefore is not present to the senses. Yet, vision reveals something, whether good or bad, achievable or unachievable.
This is far more than the “Vision 2020” or “Vision 2015” that most African countries and indeed poor countries of the world ascribe to today. It is therefore not shocking that the Director of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei, has indicated that Ghana lacked the requisite leadership, political commitment, and passion to properly develop a national agenda and vision for development when it drew up its Vision 2020 agenda.
According to him, although Ghana had the elements for a powerful national vision, past and recent visions like the Vision 2020 of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to turn Ghana into a middle-income country by the year 2020, and that of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to also turn Ghana into a middle-income country by 2015 have all remained intellectual and political exercises rather than national visions.
"We have political aspirations but not a clear development vision. A vision without an agenda or strategy is a mere dream; and a dream unrealized may lead to despair at best and rebellion at worst. Without vision, so-called leaders are mere managers of the status quo", Professor Adei stated. Ghana is not alone in this rugged path to economic development. Countries in Africa that have managed to lay clear their vision and aspirations for the people to follow have also managed to improve their national economies.
It is not all that gloom in Africa when against all the odds, countries like Botswana and Malaysia have managed to steer clear off the rough road of political drudgery to develop national policies and programmes consistent with the vision of the leaders, to achieve economic growth and development.
The same cannot be said of countries like Nigeria and Ghana that even though have enough human and natural resources to help them to develop, have fallen down the ladder of the league prosperous economies of the world today. And the sad aspect of it all is that leaders of most African countries are proud to talk about their failures without offering better alternatives than to beg for aid.
“Forty years ago, Korea and Nigeria were much in the same position. Since then, however, many changes have taken place to bring about conspicuous differences between the two countries”, were the candid observations made by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo during his March 9 summit talks with South Korea’s President Roh Moo-hyun, who was on a state visit to the country.
But Nigeria should be doing far more than South Korea today, or at least should have been at the same level as the Koreans in terms of economic growth and GDP figures. But that is not the case and South Korea is now the world’s 11th largest economy and has launched their own “African Development Initiative” to help African countries!
Is it therefore a surprise that the Nigerian president has visited Seoul no less than six times, (at the time of writing) since coming to power? Ghana has also sent a delegation to the country to work on bilateral co-operation between the two countries, presumably on the transfer of technology. South Korea’s commitment to Africa today is to triple its Official Development Assistance (ODA) bound for Africa to $100 million by 2008.
The failing of the African continent has therefore caused every institution, country or individual with small amounts of dollars to spare to launch their own initiative “aimed at Africa’s development”. So who will develop Africa then?
