CEEME Community: The importance of good leadership

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation”
– Nelson Mandela

In this blog post, we are drawing your attention to the importance of good leadership in all arenas from the political, commercial and entrepreneurial to government service and suggesting that it is critical for you in whatever role you play in your country’s Health Information System (HIS).

In a TED talk entitled “The leaders that ruined Africa and the generation who can fix it,” Fred Swaniker, a native born Ghanaian with experience living and being educated in Gambia, Botsuana, Zimbabue, and the US speaks to his realization that Africa would, in the future, “rise or fall depending on the quality of its leaders.” He adds that the current generation has the chance to change the fate of Africa, increasing prosperity for all people through entrepreneurial activities and building strong public institutions that allow countries to be governed in such a way that they “are not held ransom by individual leaders.”

Sr. Swaniker emphasizes that the continent cannot just wait for such leaders to appear. Home-grown leadership, the education of young people in Africa, is critical for developing the capacity, ethics and integrity of such leaders. El African Leadership Academy which he established bases its acceptances to the program based primarily on one question; “What is the potential you have to transform Africa?”

See video of his TED talk The leaders who ruined Africa, and the generation who can fix.

A second TED talk by Patrick Awuah speaks to his experiences in a US university and where those experiences led him. He learned the importance of critical thinking, that creativity leads to empowerment, and that “the state of the world will [últimamente] depend on what is happening in Africa.”

He returned to his native country, Ghana, asking about why Africa countries are so prone to corruption and weak institutions. The response he found is that a “graduate from a university in Ghana has a stronger sense of entitlement than a sense of responsibility.” His conclusion was that the education system had not educated the people properly and that it was important to be “intentional” about how leaders are trained. As a result, he established Ashesi University, a private not-for-profit institution in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

Was it possible to produce principled leaders who viewed leadership in terms of serving others? Was it “mission impossible?” No. His institution has been successful in graduating people who are well-educated for leadership and is the process of expanding to other countries.

See video of Mr. Awuah’s talk How to educate leaders? Liberal arts.

What does this have to do with Creating an Enabling Environment for M&mi? Throughout any successful organization there are people at all levels who demonstrate critical thinking and creativity. When they do, they find that they and their teams achieve greater success.