African News

[1/1] BBC News - Africa
The latest stories from the Africa section of the BBC News web site.
[1/15] Somalia moves to evict squatters

[2/15] Blasts rock north Nigeria cities

[3/15] SA 'resurrected singer' detained

[4/15] Ghana 'lucky' to be in last four

[5/15] Egypt 'to try foreign NGO staff'

[6/15] Militants 'hit Nigeria pipeline'

[7/15] ANC youth leader appeal dismissed

[8/15] Cairo clashes over football anger

[9/15] Famine 'over' in Somalia, UN says

[10/15] Many die at S Sudan peace meeting

[11/15] Malaria toll 'is twice as high'

[12/15] Uganda signs oil production deal

[13/15] Sinai gunmen release US tourists

[14/15] Ivorians defend coach's approach

[15/15] Mali captain hails Eagles' spirit
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Leadership Quotes


  1. "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
    — Peter F. Drucker

    "Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results"
    — George S. Patton

    "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it."
    — Dwight Eisenhower

    "A leader is a dealer in hope."
    — Napoleon Bonaparte

    "I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?"
    — Benjamin Disraeli

    "The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it."
    — Elaine Agather

    "Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too."
    — Robert Half

    "Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women."
    — Groucho Marx

    "The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet."
    — Theodore M. Hesburgh

    "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
    — Theodore Roosevelt

    "A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd."
    — James Crook

    "People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led."
    — H. Ross Perot

    "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
    — The Bible

    "Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility."
    — St. Augustine

    "Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all."
    — Dwight D. Eisenhower

    "Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes."
    — Lewis Grizzard

    "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves."
    — Lao-Tzu

    "It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead -- and find no one there."
    — Franklin D. Roosevelt

    "What you cannot enforce, do not command."
    — Sophocles

    "The question, 'Who ought to be boss?', is like asking, 'Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor."
    — Henry Ford

    "To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'"
    — Lao-tsu

    "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch."
    — Jesus Christ

    "Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
    — Winston Churchill

    "Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers."
    — Dee Hock 
Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa

    "All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership."
    — John Kenneth Galbraith

    "If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever."
    — G.K. Chesterton to Alexander Woollcott

    "The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."
    — Henry Kissinger

    "No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings."
    — Peter Drucker

    "The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already."
    — John Buchan

    "You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that's assault, not leadership."
    — Dwight D. Eisenhower

    "The best is he who calls men to the best. And those who heed the call are also blessed. But worthless who call not, heed not, but rest."
    — Hesiod
 8th Century BC Greek poet

    "Never give an order that can't be obeyed."
    — General Douglas MacArthur

    "Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and of tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away."
    — Admiral James B. Stockdale

    "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand."
    — General Colin Powell

    "I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be."
    — Warren Bennis

    "Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better."
    — Harry Truman

    "The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. ... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership."
    — Gary Wills
Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders

    "A leader is one who influences a specific group of people to move in a God-given direction."
    — J. Robert Clinton

    "All Leadership is influence."
    — John C. Maxwell
Injoy, Inc.

    "Now there are five matters to which a general must pay strict heed. The first of these is administration; the second, preparedness; the third, determination; the fourth, prudence; and the fifth, economy."
    — Wu Ch'i (430-381 BC)

    "You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too."
    — Sam Rayburn

    "Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated."
    — Dag Hammarskjöld

    "The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on."
    — Walter Lippmann

    "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, 'We did this ourselves.'"
    Lao-Tse

    "People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives."
    — Theodore Roosevelt

    "Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned."
    — Harold Geneen

    "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."
    — Max DePree

    "Four rules of leadership in a free legislative body:
First, no matter how hard-fought the issue, never get personal. Don't say or do anything that may come back to haunt you on another issue, another day....
Second, do your homework. You can't lead without knowing what you're talking about....
Third, the American legislative process is one of give and take. Use your power as a leader to persuade, not intimidate....
Fourth, be considerate of the needs of your colleagues, even if they're at the bottom of the totem pole...."
    — George Bush
Former President of the United States

    "Speak Softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
    — Theodore Roosevelt

    "Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall."
    — Stephen R. Covey

    "He who has great power should use it lightly."
    — Seneca

    "How do you know you have won? When the energy is coming the other way and when your people are visibly growing individually and as a group."
    — Sir John Harvey-Jones

    "He makes a great mistake ... who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection."
    — Terence

    "The leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those around him that he knows."
    — Clarence Randall

    "You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case."
    — Ken Kesey

    "As a leader, you're probably not doing a good job unless your employees can do a good impression of you when you're not around."
    — Patrick Lencioni

    "Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone's following you."
    — Henry Gilmer

    "Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations."
    — Peter F. Drucker

    "Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values."
    — Mike Vance

    "The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do."
    — Andrew Carnegie

    "My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence."
    — General Montgomery

    "High sentiments always win in the end, The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic."
    — George Orwell

    "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be."
    — Ralph Waldo Emerson

    "In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now."
    — Wangari Maathai

    "I think leadership comes from integrity - that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity."
    — Scott Berkun

    "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."
    — Jack Welch

    "I think that the best training a top manager can be engaged in is management by example. I want to make sure there is no discrepancy between what we say and what we do. If you preach accountability and then promote somebody with bad results, it doesn't work. I personally believe the best training is management by example. Don't believe what I say. Believe what I do."
    — Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan

    "If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don't have to manage them."
    — Jack Welch

    "Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich."
    — Robert H. Johnson

    "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it."
    — Proverbs 3:27

    "Catch someone doing something right."
    — Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

    "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
    — Paul Dickson

    "Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out."
    — Ronald Reagan

    "Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end."
    — Immanuel Kant

    "Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't."
    — Peter Drucker

    "Don't equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don't let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you'd like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea."
    — Harvey Mackay

    "Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish."
    — Marcus Aurelius

    "We cling to hierarchies because our place in a hierarchy is, rightly or wrongly, a major indicator of our social worth."
    — Harold J. Leavitt

    "Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall."
    — Stephen R. Covey

    "Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it . . . ; Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine."
    — David Ogilvy

    "When hiring key employees, there are only two qualities to look for: judgement and taste. Almost everything else can be bought by the yard."
    — John W. Gardner

    "The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided."
    — Casey Stengel

    "A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."
    — John Le Caré

    "I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can be very often traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people."
    — Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
A Business and its Beliefs (1963)

    "Focus on a few key objectives ... I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I'm really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas."
    — Jack Welch

    "So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work."
    — Peter Drucker

    "Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet."
    — Henry Mintzberg
McGill University

    "If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf."
    — R Buckminster Fuller

    "The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work."
    — Agha Hasan Abedi

    "Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
    — Tom Peters

    "The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
    — General George S. Patton, Jr.

    "Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
    — Mark Twain

    "Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down."
    — Ray Bradbury

    "People will rise to meet seemingly insurmountable obstacles and challenges if they understand the worthiness of the personal sacrifices and effort. Supporting that understanding must be mentors who provide leadership; without both ingredients, a cause will go unrealized and a mission is likely to fail."
    — Glenn R. Jones
Creating a Leadership Organization with a Learning Mission in The Organization of the Future

    "This the world of white water where we have to change to survive; where we have to develop to thrive; and, paradoxically, where the very act of change increases the risk that we won't survive."
    — Randall White, Phillip Hodgson and Stuart Crainer
The Future of Leadership: A White Water Revolution

    "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
    — Helen Keller

    "Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting."
    — Karl Wallenda

    "What leaders have to remember is that somewhere under the somnolent surface is the creature that builds civilizations, the dreamer of dreams, the risk taker. And remembering that, the leader must reach down to the springs that never dry up, the ever-fresh springs of the human spirit."
    — John W. Gardner

    "If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough."
    —Mario Andretti

    "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
    — Robert Frost

    "The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety."
    — Goethe

    "The secret to my success is that I bit off more than I could chew and chewed as fast as I could."
    — Paul Hogan

    "Are you placing enough interesting, freakish, long shot, weirdo bets?"
    — Tom Peters

    "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
    — Robert F. Kennedy

    "A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one would find fault with what he has done."
    — Cardinal Newman
British Preacher (1801-1890)

    "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
    — William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

    "Let's make a dent in the universe."
    — Steve Jobs

    "Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."
    — Frederick Wilcox

    "Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?"
    — Jimmy Johnson
Dallas Cowboys Coach

    "To win without risk is to triumph without glory."
    — Pierre Corneille

    "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
    — T.S. Eliot

    "To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'"
    — Lao-tsu

    "If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch."
    — Jesus Christ

    "Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
    — Winston Churchill

    "Control is not leadership; management is not leadership; leadership is leadership. If you seek to lead, invest at least 50% of your time in leading yourself—your own purpose, ethics, principles, motivation, conduct. Invest at least 20% leading those with authority over you and 15% leading your peers."
    — Dee Hock
Founder and CEO Emeritus, Visa

    "All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership."
    — John Kenneth Galbraith

    "If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever."
    — G.K. Chesterton to Alexander Woollcott

    "The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been."
    — Henry Kissinger

Archived Issues

Transforming Leadership in Africa

chief-obafemi-wolowo

Chief Obafemi Awolowo
African Leadership Profile
THE BEAUTIFUL ONES

Each issue of the journal will contain a leadership profile section where life and times of a renowned African leader will be x-rayed. Such leader may be a politician, a businessman, a social reformer, a religious person, a scientist or an outstanding scholar. That is, a personality, we love the present generation of Africans to emulate.

In this issue of the journal, the late sage; Chief Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria is profiled in our leadership profile section. In many ways he was first among equals; he started the first universal free primary education in Africa in January 1955, established the first Television Station in Africa in October 1959, started the first free health service for children under 18 in Africa in January 1955, established the best civil service in Black Africa, established the first industrial estate in Nigeria in 1958 at lkeja and later at Ilupeju, which today accommodate the largest concentration of industries in West Africa. More…


Back Issue
Back Issue - African Leadership Review
Vol.1, No.1 June 2009

African nations are crying out for good leaders and good governance,
two phenomena that have become illusive for several decades.
About 80 percent (80%) of African nations have
serious political and economic problems.
Virtually all those problems are by-products of bad governance and bad leadership.
In this issue, African Leadership Review examines Africa’s leadership problems
which are gradually developing into an incurable sore
that is not responding to any medication. More…

 

Africa and the Problem of Leadership

African nations are crying out for good leaders and good governance, two phenomena that have become illusive for several decades. Today, one can see frustration and despair in most countries of Africa.

For the most of Africa’s history, the continent had been saddled with bad leaders who plundered its riches, subjecting their own people to untold misery and abject poverty. The gaps between the rulers and the ruled continue to widen year after year. The rulers generally live in opulence and great wealth while the ruled wallow in destitution, majority living in squalor and brink of starvation.

How can the citizens make governance in Africa obey civilized rules and conduct?  How can they prevent their leaders from looting their treasuries or cornering the resources meant for all the citizens, for just a few people?  How can the continent develop structures that will stimulate the emergence of responsible and effective managers of resources?

Find out some of the answers to these leadership problems in this issue of African Leadership Review.


Howard Jeter : The African Leadership Review
The Problems of Leadership in Africa
By Ambassador Howard Jeter, Former Us Ambassador to Nigeria
Speech given at the inauguration of Ken Nnamani Centre
for Leadership and Development in Africa, Abuja, Nigeria.

‘I have spent the last 20 years, half of my life – well, maybe one third of my life – in Africa.  My children were born and grew up on this continent.  When my wife and I make a list of the great friends in our lives, the vast majority are in Africa.  I have a personal stake in what happens on this continent, and I want to share with you,…… some of the very basic principles – principles gleaned from my experience – that I believe, a good leader must follow.’   For more go to eJournal


Yakubu Gowon : The Problems of Leadership in Africa
The Problems of Leadership in Africa
By General Yakubu Gowon
Speech given at the inauguration of Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development in Africa, Abuja, Nigeria.

‘As young men in the 60s, some of us became, rightly or wrongly impatient with the very slow pace that our post colonial leadership was offering our people.  We (the Military) then mounted the stage and tried to offer varying degrees of leadership and governance and what we thought would get our people and our country moving towards its manifest greatness.  Unfortunately, after over three decades of military rule, we are convinced that the dictatorial rule cannot and have failed in delivering the most needed development and transformation of our continent.’     For more go to eJournal



Jerry Rawlings The Problems of Leadership in Africa
The Problems of Leadership in Africa
By Jerry Rawlings – Former President of Ghana
Speech given at the inauguration of Ken Nnamani Centre for Leadership and Development in Africa, Abuja, Nigeria.

‘Yet, we do not realize that the so-called Western nations have institutionalized what traditional Africa invented.  The checks and balances in Western democracies are similar in form and substance to the vectors of truth and knowledge that we are discarding in Africa.  The time it was that you could establish the truth in a dispute whether it is among ordinary men or between a “commoner” or a Chief.  Time it was that you could get three square meals by tilling the land around your compound.  Time it was that your dignity as an Africa was measured not in terms of how many polluting cars you have but how many milking cows you raised.’    For more go to eJournal



External Factors Militating Against the Effective Performance of African Managers 1960 – 2008
By Omobola Borisade

‘Merging different nations by force to form imaginary countries by the European colonizers had done the greatest disservice to the peace of Africa. In Nigeria, for example, the Yorubas, the Hausa-Fulanis and the Ibos with different cultures, histories, values, ways of life, etc. had lived separately and with considerable peace before the British came.  The area occupied by Hausa-Fulani of Northern Nigeria was about 2 times the size of Great Britain. Each of the Southern tribes of Yoruba and Ibo occupies an area almost as big as Britain itself. The Yoruba nation, Ibo nation and the Hausa-Fulani could have been separate countries enjoying considerable peace and harmony. But the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Nigeria in 1914 by the British brought problems that could still not be solved. It was worse; no one in Nigeria was consulted.’    For more go to eJournal


African Leadership Profile: The Beautiful Ones
African Leadership Profile: The Beautiful Ones
Chief Obafemi Awolowo

By Micheal Awe (editor)

He started the first universal free primary education in Africa in January 1955
He established the first Television Station in Africa in October 1959.
He started the first free health service for children under 18 in Africa in January 1955.
He established the best civil service in Black Africa.  
He established the first industrial estate in 1958 at lkeja and later at Ilupeju, which today accommodate the largest concentration of industries in West Africa.
For more go to eJournal