Emergence plans across Africa: are we really going somewhere?

Most African countries today are deploying plans to become “emergent nations” in a decade or two. From Yaounde to Nairobi, from Dakar to Kampala, almost everywhere in Africa, you hear “Vision 20xx”. These plans are carefully crafted and explain how infrastructures and services will be transformed, and how manufacturing, agriculture, energy, transport and healthcare will be metamorphosed. Let us call this part the “hardware”. But this broken hardware of African countries is not the root cause of our problems, it is the consequence. There is an essential part that is missing and that is the cause, let us call it the “software”. It is the internal motivation, the internal drive, the underlying beliefs and values which determine people behaviors and choices. Any transformational plan that is not grounded in a congruent software that drives implementers at every strategic level is doomed. Even if it was forced to take form, it will appear with huge delays and full of malformations. It will amplify rather than break the cycle of poverty. It will increase the gap between the rich and the poor, and therefore it will not be sustained.

The real challenges at hand are:

• To understand how to turn people who have a long history of corruption into people of integrity.
• To turn people away from longstanding exclusion toward inclusion.
• To change endemically self-serving mindsets into common-good oriented people.
• To turn shortsightedness and fire-fighter-response mentalities into long-term-inclined people who execute with perfection.

These issues are at the heart of Africa’s transformation. Are we saying that the hardware is secondary? Far from that. We are only saying that without new positive beliefs and values and behaviors, emergence will not become a durable reality if ever it appears. And there is no positive mentality except it is materialized in a large consumer class in the middle of society, and unless we see exemplary infrastructures and quality services at the reach of the large majority. Both software and hardware need to go hand in hand. The problem is that few of these plans have even thought of the software. And those like Kenya who have evoked it in their plans seldom have a solid methodology to “setup” this new software in the minds of every nation builder across the nation.

Transformational leadership combined with coaching from the top of every institution seem to provide a clear path to rebuilding Africa. Unlike information campaigns which are similar to preaching in the desert, coaching from the top will get leaders to close their “knowing-doing” gap. Our leaders know so many good principles, they have attended so many good schools and training seminars, but that knowledge has remained dead for the most part. Good coaching usually has power to turn knowledge into action. Coaching from the top will create exemplarity at the top and ease the diffusion of good attitudes in the whole society. Finally, coaching from the top means starting with opinion leaders. Making less than three percent of any population, opinion leaders determine the behaviors and choices of almost everyone else. Except governments and communities invest energy and resources in upgrading the software of Africans’ minds, we are doubtful that these emergence plans will make any lasting difference on the continent.

Victor Manyim