Change mindset to change Africa

Current and former leaders from across the continent argued that achieving Africa’s ambitious continental goals will require a far greater focus on implementation, accountability and institutional capacity. Lennox Yieke reports.

The African Mindset Forum, hosted by the African School of Governance under the leadership of President Paul Kagame and H.E. Hailemariam Desalegn, former Prime Minister of Ethiopia, was held in Kigali, Rwanda, in August.

Under the theme ‘From Pan-Africanism to Meta-Africanism’, the two-day conference brought together political leaders, young organisers, activists, CEOs, entrepreneurs and creatives for intergenerational dialogue on how to transform Africa through a shift in mindset, with young and emerging leaders making up 80% of attendees.

Africa already has many of the plans, policies and resources it needs to achieve its development ambitions. What it has repeatedly struggled to do, leaders at the Forum argued, is turn those commitments into results.

Delivering the keynote address, former South African President Thabo Mbeki said the critical missing ingredient was leadership with the mindset and commitment to translate continental objectives into practical outcomes. “The real issue is about the people who must act to ensure that our continent achieves these identified objectives. This is about the quality of leadership.”

According to Mbeki, Africa needs leaders who see themselves as agents of development above all else and who are committed to the cause of Pan-Africanism.

“We need leadership with the mindset of a principled and dedicated agent for fundamental change to enable our continent to achieve its Renaissance,” he stressed.

With extensive policies and agreements already covering governance, human rights, peace and security, democracy, and women’s rights, he argued, the continent should have been much further towards achieving its goals than it currently has. The necessary development cannot simply be imposed from above.

“It is in reality impossible to rely on leaders who lack legitimacy to act as agents for the genuine transformation of our continent in favour of the ordinary masses of the people,” he said.

“In any case, the fundamental transformation of our continent cannot be achieved as an elite project but has to engage masses of the people as conscious agents of change.”

President Paul Kagame of Rwanda echoed Mbeki’s argument that Africa already has the people and resources required to succeed – but has repeatedly failed to convert them into the desired results.

The continent, he argued, can no longer afford to repeatedly discuss its problems without confronting the reasons progress remains slow. “We have to change our continent, but we can’t change our continent without changing our behaviour and our attitudes. We can’t keep saying what we have to do and then do different things!”

Pan-Africanism requires accountability

African leaders also called for greater courage in holding one another accountable. Sovereignty could not, argued Kagame, be treated as a shield for leaders actively undermining their countries’ interests – “when leaders are not doing the right thing, we should have the courage to raise it,” he said.

Similarly, Mbeki argued that African governments must hold each other accountable for delivering on shared continental commitments. “As Africans, including as African leaders, we share a common task to work for the unity and the renaissance of our continent. To achieve this historic goal, we must work as one team,” he said.

“Africa cannot achieve a renaissance without a leadership with the right mindset driven by a deeply felt Pan-Africanism or Meta-Africanism.”

From ambition to execution

The gap between ambition and execution is particularly visible in the way Africa uses its own economic resources, with substantial capital accumulated across the continent but not effectively deployed towards industrialisation, infrastructure and job creation.

While around $4tn have been accumulated by African banks, pension funds, insurance pools and sovereign institutions, most has not been directed towards the continent’s transformation, which is estimated to require about $2.4tn in infrastructure investment.

Thabo Mbeki spoke of this chasm. “Capital is accumulating across Africa, but it is not creating jobs at scale, and this is the disconnect we must fix.”

Speaking ahead of the Forum’s panel discussion, African Development Bank President Dr Sidi Ould Tah made a similar argument: Africa’s challenge is not necessarily a lack of assets; rather, it is its inability to convert those assets into productive capacity.

“For too long, Africa has been described through the language of deficiency. A continent lacking capital, lacking skills, lacking infrastructure, lacking technology, and waiting for others to close the gaps,” Tah said.

But that framing, he argued, ignores the considerable assets already available to the continent.

“A mineral in the ground is not an industrial strategy. A young population is not automatically a demographic dividend. Savings that leave the continent do not finance African development. A market divided by borders and incompatible systems does not acquire scale merely because we call it continental,” he said.

Tah also argued that Africa has for too long exported raw materials with limited processing before importing finished products at greater cost — effectively exporting jobs, technology and productive capacity alongside its commodities.

“A different mindset means that possessing natural wealth can no longer be confused with achieving economic transformation,” he said.

Furthermore, Africa should avoid simply reproducing the industrial models developed elsewhere, particularly as the global economy is being transformed by digital and AI technologies, renewable energy, and new production methods.

“Africa must industrialise in the economy that is emerging, not in the economy of yesterday,” he said. But transforming the ambition into economic activity requires setting a stable foundation of infrastructure and connectivity.

Ould Tah said stronger infrastructure and connectivity must be matched by greater financial sovereignty, giving African countries more capacity to “mobilise domestic resources, make strategic choices, absorb shocks, and engage external partners from a position of clarity.”

Looking inward instead of outward

Kagame criticised what he described as a recurring tendency to admire achievements outside the continent while failing to recognise and replicate successful initiatives within Africa. “Among us, there are people who are capable of doing good things, so why don’t we join them and do exactly that instead?” he asked.

Similarly, Ghana’s Vice President Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang warned against the continent’s continued dependence on external support. “We should move ourselves from a position where we think others must do things for us. Nobody should be doing anything for us. We should be doing it for ourselves – we need to move away from the situation where even our budgets depend on what others are bringing to us.”

As long as key decisions continue to be formulated elsewhere and African institutions take on the role of implementation rather than planning, Africa will struggle to execute its own development agenda, she continued.

“We need to go back to the fundamentals and imagine something that our Pan-Africanists imagined – a continent capable of going into negotiations with the proper information, education and the confidence and the willingness to do what is necessary for our continent to grow sustainably.”

Changing leadership means changing mindsets

Africa’s transformation will ultimately require a shift “from a rent-seeking dominated political economy to a developmental political economy”, said former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn Boshe, calling for a change in leadership culture.

He cautioned that such a shift would take generations, arguing that the African School of Governance could help equip young Africans to carry the continent’s transformation agenda forward.

But lasting change, he maintained, could not come from leaders alone. “If we don’t involve our masses, we cannot change Africa. Political elites alone cannot change Africa. Business elites alone cannot change Africa. We need the masses behind the agenda.”

Dessalegn Boshe pointed to Ethiopia’s response to the 2015 El Niño drought as an example, arguing that financing the response domestically helped shift perceptions of the country from dependency towards self-reliance.

A process of transforming leadership, argued Opoku-Agyemang, must also begin with a better understanding of Africa’s own history and of who has traditionally defined the continent’s identity and narrative. “I feel one of the things we are missing is to understand our history. Who have we been? Where have we come from? And then why are we here? What has our past been like? Who has been telling our story?”

She urged the African School of Governance to ensure that its teaching and research were grounded more heavily in African experience rather than relying primarily on knowledge produced elsewhere.

“I want to humbly suggest that the theories are based on research we have done and not extending research others have done. Otherwise we’ll come back here,” she said.

Ultimately, Opoku-Agyemang argued, building the capacity of Africa’s young population will be critical if the continent is to change how it leads, makes decisions and understands its own possibilities. Africa must move from being “a victim of circumstance, to an active agent of change.

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