Jackie Chimhanzi, CEO at the African Leadership Institute provides her fascinating insights on leadership

“Servant leadership is the essence of good leadership, it should never be about yourself, it should be about the people you serve.”

Jackie Chimhanzi

Stories Africa: Welcome to this week’s issue of the podcast. I’m delighted this week to be joined by Dr. Jackie Chimhanzi. She is many things, but primarily in terms of her professional responsibilities, she is CEO at the African Leadership Institute, based in Johannesburg, but with students from across the continent. Jackie, welcome. 

Jackie Chimhanzi: Thank you very much, Marcus.

SA: You have been part of the journey that I’ve been on over the last six months in putting together this Stories Africa platform, a collaboration between Africa Practice and the World Economic Forum’s Leadership and Values Initiative. We’ve come together to try to promote and disseminate stories of inspiration and values based leadership from across our continent. Jackie, you and your colleagues at the African Leadership Institute have been immensely helpful to us in this project, and we publicly thank you. I know that you’re doing some fantastic work at AFLI, but for our audience’s benefit, perhaps you could tell us more about AFLI and the work that you’re leading there and also what motivated you to join and lead this institution? 

JC: The African Leadership Institute was co- founded in 2006 by Peter Wilson and Sean Lance. Sean, at the time, was the COO of GlaxoSmithKline. He led the big merger from Smithkline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome. Peter Wilson, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, was a consultant working with him. As they reached retirement, they founded AFLI as their way of giving back. What they had observed during their careers was the lack of effective leadership on the continent and they decided to set up the program as a way of nurturing a new generation of young leaders who are ethical, exhibiting servant leadership, who are courageous and bold, with morality at the centre. Of course, these values are taken from Archbishop Tutu, who is our patron. The program draws quite heavily on the Archbishop’s values. We are hoping really to nurture a critical mass of new leaders who will transform the continent.

MC: Great, and this issue of a deficit of good leadership on the African continent, it was a key motivation, as you’ve just described for your founders and setting up AFLI, why is this? What’s your view there? 

JC: When we look at African development challenges, whether it’s healthcare, education, agriculture, food security/insecurity, infrastructure, all of these are essentially underpinned by one factor; leadership. The perception that there is a shortage of leaders on the continent is there because Africa hasn’t progressed nearly enough yet. I understand why this perception exists, but I would choose to challenge it. I believe it’s a misconception. The leaders are there, I work with them, I see them every day, they’re doing brilliant work and transforming their sectors. They are disrupting in education, healthcare etc, so leaders are there. I would say that the issue is that these young leaders are not operating where they should be operating. What we see in Africa is a poor market deployment situation. We have a pool of resources outside of the place where they should be and therefore our institutions are starved of these exceptional human capital, because they’re not where they should be. There’s a mismatch on the supply and demand side. So I think the answer to that, is looking at how we get more new leaders into institutions, into governance, in order to propel Africa forward. I would describe it as these new leaders are operating on the ‘periphery’. I know, it doesn’t sound like a nice word, because they’re doing very important work. But as long as they’re not at the center, I consider it the periphery. Therefore, whilst the centre is not strong, all their efforts on the periphery, in education, healthcare etc. are sub-optimal. If the policies are not right at the center, whatever they do is that much harder because of a lack of enabling policies. Therefore trying to fundraise for their solutions is much harder because of this. Perceptions of investors are also not overly favourable but ultimately, their work is that much harder because they’re not at the centre. I think one way to tackle that is to ask how do we bring these new leaders in various sectors into being part of governance and policymaking as experts?

SA: Yes, I was speaking to a gentleman last week, who lectures on ethics and leadership. He was telling me that one of the challenges that we have on the continent is weak institutions and poorly designed policy and to the point that you just made, he pointed out to me that actually there’s no shortage of good leaders on the continent, but that challenge we have is weakness of institutions and poor policy design. And therefore without those two things, it becomes very hard even for the best intentioned leaders to achieve the sorts of reforms or changes that they like.

JC: Also the other issue, I’m not sure whether it’s a cultural or related to patriarchy, but I have a sense that our current leaders don’t take young people seriously enough.These are people in their 40s/30s who have gone to Harvard, they’ve gone to Oxford, they’ve worked on Wall Street, they’ve got global exposure. They’re fundraising in Silicon Valley, New York, they’re very savvy. They’ve got great ideas, but somehow our leaders just don’t seem to take them seriously. I think maybe it’s a cultural thing, a power distance. So if you’re an eighty year old president, you don’t listen to a thirty-five year old, because really, what do they know? The irony of it is these people got in when they were around thirty, very young. Suddenly, they just hogging the space and they’re not letting new ideas in, which is quite a shame. It’s not even as though young leaders want to take over, all they’re asking for is to work together. This is our continent, let’s work together. I really believe there’s magic that happens at the intersect of experience and new ideas.

SA: It’s interesting to me how quickly you focused in on political leadership, and made the distinction between the fact that we have a lot of great leaders, enterprising leaders, innovating in areas that you mentioned, education, healthcare, but that in the political realm, our continent is dominated by an older generation of non-progressives, and I know that you’ve spent a lot of time close to politicians, not just in your own country, but on the continent. I’ve also had the privilege of spending some time with political leaders on the continent. My own impression is that it’s not through an absence of desire to make changes, not through an absence, in many respects, of quite progressive thinking, these leaders in too many instances almost become prisoners in their own palaces. They become starved of the sort of innovation and progressive thinking, which abounds in some of the younger generation working on, to quote you, the “periphery”? Do think about this and think about what’s required to address that. What did you call it before, “the perfect marriage”? 

JC: I do think about it. In fact, we’ve just published a report recently where we make some recommendations for how we begin to address this. So, from a supply and demand perspective, we see that young people want to make a difference, they want to help governments, however, the platforms that would allow them to make that contribution don’t exist. What we did in this report, we proposed different mechanisms that various governments can put into place, that would serve as platforms to bring young people into governance. So for example, why not have an advisory council of young experts, which allows these young people to continue disrupting in education, healthcare and agriculture, but you create a platform whereby they can help inform and shape government policy. Ultimately, these are the people on the ground right there at the coalface, they understand the issue.  We’ve got young people setting up incubators, they understand the challenges of entrepreneurs, they understand the challenges of accessing capital, why do you not bring them to the table so that they can help to co-create solutions. There are different ways that can be done, it doesn’t mean that everybody must go into government, because not everybody wants to be a politician. However, I think there are ways to leverage expertise in the private sector by creating certain mechanisms. And I think it’s a win-win.

SA: I was impressed by the cohort of your students at AFLI, who wrote an open letter to President Buhari just a few weeks ago, in response to the #ENDSARS movement, the peaceful protests that took place and the Armed Forces response shooting that took place in Lekki, in Lagos. I was impressed because it was a very open, publicized communication. They didn’t pull any punches in reminding Nigeria’s head of state that he was an elected official and a servant of the people of Nigeria, and that they expected a different form of leadership and a different response to the protests from the state. What was your own reaction to that? I imagine you felt immensely proud. Do you think it reflects more broadly, what I perceive to be an intergenerational struggle, that you’ve just spoken about, between youth who really do want to get on and help their countries get on and who feel that this older guard who won’t budge or make room for the younger generation. 

JC: I don’t think he’ll appreciate being called a servant, but servant leadership is what is needed. Servant leadership is the essence of good leadership, it should never be about yourself, it should be about the people you serve. I was immensely proud, just by the way that the fellows self mobilised and I think it reflects the kind of culture we’re trying to inculcate with the fellowship. We’re trying to create a critical mass of young leaders who will transform the continent, either individually or collectively. What they did really speaks to the heart of the Tutu fellowship spirit, which I try to encourage. Your comments about this being a broader intergenerational struggle beyond just Nigeria, I think that’s spot on. The continent is the youngest in the world, yet, we just don’t see enough young people in governance, so there’s a problem there. This problem is threefold. Firstly, a lack of representation, young people don’t see people in governance and leadership who look like them, they can lead, but there’s a problem of co-creation. These leaders are currently not leveraging young people, as we talked about co-creating solutions, they’re actually doing themselves a disservice because these young people could help them co-create solutions across multiple sectors, and make them look good. The young people can do all the work, and they can take the credit, but they’re not even doing that. The third one is a sustainability issue. All of this current generation of leaders have set up agenda 2063 at the African Union, but they won’t be here in 2063. I think there needs to be an intentional, deliberate process of succession to begin to bring young people into these institutions, so that they start to understand how governance works to allow for seamless transition. Again, they’re doing themselves a disservice. They’ve got agenda 2063 and they’re not bringing young people in. It’s almost doomed to fail, because young people don’t understand how these institutions work. Young people don’t understand ECOWAS or the EAC, they are just very removed and very divorced from the key institutions that drive Africa forward. They don’t understand the AU at all, it is essentially just a mystique. Young people don’t understand how it works at all. Therefore, to summarise, they’re doing themselves a disservice. However, I would say that the struggle, and I know you’ve said it’s intergenerational, it’s not as simplistic as old leaders versus young leaders, because I’m sure there are also young leaders who are not ethical. Therefore it’s not that simplistic. I like to define it as old leaders versus new leaders. New leaders could be old or young, driven by a new paradigm, a new way of doing things, new ideas, new energy, new solutions to old problems. I think for me, ‘new’ better captures the younger generation. But like I said, not all young people are necessarily ethical, so I’m more interested in a new way of doing things. 

SA: Yes, arguably, young people may be less ethical than the generations that went before them. There are far more temptations to behave, or to compromise one’s ethics or values than previous generations might have had. I wanted to talk to you about two things, because you mentioned earlier patriarchy and our patriarchal societies. I live in Botswana, as you know, not one female MP was returned to Parliament in the last election, there were candidates but the electorate preferred men over women, and the electorate, we must assume is around 50% women. So women are voting for men, and by and large, they’re voting for older men, so this patriarchy problem that you referenced is a real problem, isn’t it? And it is not just one about the values that an older generation of male leaders has. It’s actually the values held within society at large these, these people at the top are representative of a broader societal perspective, it’s a problem. Do you feel that enough is being done to address the gender imbalance in our politics specifically, but also the generational imbalance? I’m guessing from what you said earlier, about the work that you’re doing to address the generational imbalance that the answer to that is no, but do you see progress on the agenda from us? 

JC: That’s a very good question. To highlight what I mean by patriarchal, like you said, it relates both to gender and to age. From an age perspective, African culture has really permeated everything we do in African societies. Even in the home, you’re the head of the household, you’re the father of the house, whatever you say goes, you don’t get questioned. Children only speak when spoken to, you go to school, the teacher walks in, everybody stands up says good morning, to the teacher and he/she writes on the board, you copy everything down, you regurgitate it in your exams and you don’t differ from what the teacher wrote out because then you’re challenging the teacher. That kind of prescriptive behaviour and way of doing things, has also entered and affected the political arena. Politics exists within the context of cultures, so then, when we have all these dictators who don’t want to be challenged, we shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s how they’ve been raised with this huge power distance. I don’t know what the answer is. From a gender perspective, It’s difficult for women to get into the political space, shaming and name calling that all still happens in 2020, therefore we still have quite a long way to go. In order to address the imbalance, both from a gender and an age perspective, I’m not sure whether quotas are the way to go. I don’t think we should be relying on goodwill to change societies and governance systems. I think people must be forced to to comply. It must be legislation, it must be policed, it must be enforced and monitored. I think that’s the only way to get change. Take Rwanda for example, with their legal quotas for parliament, it made real change. They now have the highest female government representation in Parliament because of these quotas. I think that’s where we need to be headed, because I don’t think goodwill is going to get the results we require and we need, we need change fast. Therefore, if men are occupying these spaces, what’s the incentive for them to change? It works well for them, so why would they change? That’s my view, we need policing, we need enforcement, we need quotas. More recently looking at women on boards, even America is doing it, can you imagine the so-called developed world putting quotas in place, it just shows how dire the need is.

SA: I wanted to address values, you’ve referenced it a few times already in our conversation and I touched on it a little bit earlier.  We can’t make the assumption that our youth are growing up with the appropriate values, it needs to be a deliberate effort to ensure that they are because it’s really at the center of good quality leadership.  You can capacitate, you can make prescriptions, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to rely on the ethics and values of leaders’ ability to make the right judgment call and the right decisions, in the best interests of the majority. You at AFLI are doing a lot in the area of helping your students, who are the brightest and the best that the continent has to offer, but be really steep in ethics and values based leadership development. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do there and what broader lessons there are for society and how we can ensure that this younger generation in particular, grows up with the right values? I pointed to it earlier, there are so many temptations for our youth to get rich quickly, to find celebrity quickly. I know as a father that the draw of social media and the promotion of lifestyles is not rooted in reality, and nor is it healthy. Can you tell us a little bit about your views on these issues? And specifically, what you’re doing?

JC: I really think values need to be given in parts of the education curriculum, because it’s just so important. I know there was a big drive after the 2008 financial crisis, there were  lots of discussions about how does the world come right, or the greed which has led to the breakdown of institutions? How do we inculcate right values? I think it needs to start early in schools, it needs to be part of the curriculum, because we need to raise responsible citizens. So I think that’s where it needs to start, it needs to start early. 

SA: Are you encouraged by the values and principles that you observe amongst youth and admittedly, it’s a it’s an elite that you have at AFLI, but are you encouraged by the sort of values and ethics that the younger generation display. My own take is that this is actually better than the older generation. Whether it’s Malala and her spirited promotion of girls and female rights, or Greta Thunberg and her leadership on climate, there seems to be a pretty inspirational young generation of people who are rooted in values good enough to inspire. Do you see enough examples of those amongst the cadre of students that you welcome at AFLI and and more generally, from your research and the work that you do?

JC: So when I look at millennials, I see two camps. Firstly, there’s the camp that you’ve talked about; the Malala’s, the Greta’s who are very socially conscious and striving to make a difference. But I also see another camp, the ones who want quick results, who want overnight fame. They don’t really want to work for it. They are entitled. I know a lot of corporates complain that these millennials, just hold this entitlement of not wanting to put the work in, and I’m not going to be popular for saying this, but a lot of people do struggle with millennials. I think those are the two camps that I see. And they’re very diametrically opposed. As you can see, I don’t know what your thoughts are on that?

SA: I’ve observed great differences, and we’re making generalisations here, of course, so forgive us, the audience. However, I’ve observed great differences between the different countries that I’ve had the privilege of traveling to over the last 20 years on the African continent. I’m afraid to say that the country that you live in, I’ve been really disappointed by the sorts of work ethic and values that I’ve witnessed from well educated, young people who have been seduced by the ability to buy a smart car with a bank loan, and, frankly, live beyond their means. Whereas in other societies, I see a very hard working culture that dwarfs anything that I might have been exposed to, even in Western Europe, it’s really very prolific. This is partly because there’s an urgency people need to get on, there is no social welfare, or social safety net, people are genuinely motivated to demonstrate their worth to an employer or to be productive for their families. I think on the continent we have a broad spectrum. We certainly can’t make generalizations about the continent and we probably couldn’t even make generalizations about a country in just the way that I have. 

JC: Just to add to that, we are also working on another project funded by the Ford Foundation, to set up a database of youth led, youth serving organisations in Africa and that research has been really fascinating and has actually encouraged me. These are young people who set up organisations that serve other young people in various areas, whether it’s healthcare or entrepreneurship, they are volunteer grassroots organisations. It’s been so encouraging to think that with the challenges of economies in different African countries, their young people who find the time, energy and the motivation to want to do something about their circumstances, which has been very heartwarming for me. So that’s another camp, and I guess that’s similar to the Malala’s and the Greta’s. These are young people trying to do something about the context they live in by serving other young people. That’s been very encouraging, but like you say, these are pockets and that’s very hard to generalise.

SA: And do you work on this at AFLI with your students? 

JC: No, this is a separate project, with funding from the Ford Foundation, and it’s for AFLI, separate from the Tutu fellowships. In regard to the fellowship, you asked me what I’m seeing there? It’s slightly biased because ultimately the fellows that we select have a predisposition to being servant leaders. We pick people who have some track record of being good leaders. Therefore,  our role at AFLI is not to make people leaders, our role is to take people who we think are leaders, yet would benefit from the experience of our program to take them to the next level of leadership. Therefore its unfair because we’re essentially taking people who have demonstrated leadership capabilities, but we believe with the tools and methodologies of our program, we can harness that capability even more.

SA: And the fellowship has means to probe people’s ethics and values.  I’m saying this, and it’s perhaps unfair on me, but my children are brought up as Catholics. My family has been really challenged by what we’ve observed. That has been well publicized in recent months, in terms of various activities in the church, these are people who we trusted, they were pillars of society. I therefore become rather cynical, and make assumptions that you can’t assume the ethics and values of anyone until proven otherwise. So I’m wondering what measures you take to probe those ethics and values and be satisfied that these individuals, whilst they may be bright, whilst they may be able to command followers,  they’re not necessarily grounded in the right moral values?

JC: It’s a fantastic question. What we have is an ethics committee, this committee is not part of the district governance structure, but it is run by fellows to hold each other to account. If a fellow is felt to have strayed from the values of the fellowship, they will be held to account by the ethics committee. There are numerous reasons for this because we do have a set of values that we would like our fellows to abide by in their day-to-day work, but also they carry the Archbishop’s name. They are Tutu fellows, therefore we have a responsibility to maintain the dignity of his name. The structure is intended for that purpose, because as you said, you never know who people are. Because of this, we needed a mechanism whereby as issues arise, they can be held to account. Accountability is another fundamental value within the Institute, because we are trying to avoid the current situation, whereby African leaders just bond together. These leaders don’t call each other out when bad things happen, they pat each other on the back, there’s this  boys club and for some reason, it’s just, it hasn’t served as well. We are hoping that this new generation can have honest conversations, can call each other out, and can hold each other accountable. That’s what we’re trying to inculcate. 

SA: The Mo Ibrahim Annual Index of Governance this year recorded the first deterioration in governance standards on a constant for 10 years since the date it was started. As you were speaking, then, and you talked about accountability, I was reminded about the African peer review mechanism and great fanfare around that soon after NEPAD  was launched around a decade ago with not much honest conversation. I think that peer accountability is woefully absent in the African context, are we regressing? 

JC: Yes, it would seem like we are regressing, which, which is very unfortunate. So maybe just to come back to the fellowship, what the fellows go through is a very intimate process. It’s intimate, we invite them to be vulnerable. people cry, we’ve got a psychologist that they work with.They are at their most vulnerable, it’s a safe space and we think that because of that methodology, they create very strong bonds. I think this is why they’re better able to hold each other accountable. So in a way the program is designed and speaks directly to the issue of being able to be accountable to each other. Ultimately, they end up coming into the program as strangers and leaving as a family. In fact, they don’t call each other fellows, they call each other family, the Tutu family. So the methodology is very central to our objectives. It’s having a peer network, a safe space for people with whom they can confide and serve as collaborators , as sounding boards for their careers. Not only this, but also to hold each other to account as they grow in their leadership, because as you make your way to the top, it gets lonelier. As you said, the temptations become more so it is our hope that the network can grow together and be at the sounding board as they grow in their careers.

SA: And the network is from across the whole continent, isn’t it? How many fellows are accepted annually? 

JC: It’s a very slow and deliberate process, I’ve got so much respect for the founders. Referring, again back to the intimacy, that’s a core part of it. When I look at some programs, they take two hundred people over four days, we take twenty-five a year. Since 2006 we are at around the three hundred and fifty mark. I have such great admiration for their patience to curate such an intimate, high quality exceptional program. It’s remarkable because the temptation can be just to churn out the numbers, but we would be compromising on not only the objectives but the experience as well. Overall we have about three hundred and fifty from around forty-two countries, all from across different sectors. We’ve got business leaders, people in government, civic society, all in fairly high positions across the continent.

SA: I have one final question for you, if I may, we started this conversation by addressing the quality of leadership on the continent, whether it was factual that we had poor leadership or whether it was a misconception,a perception that we did. It’s an interesting issue, because, I think as we discussed at the outset, there’s an overwhelming perception, everywhere  that we lack good leaders on the African continent. You’ve addressed that head on, you pointed out that we have an abundance of good leaders, but they’re not all occupied, or very few are in public office or senior political office. Having said that, on one hand, we’ve got some of the most renowned leaders who came from public office with a global stature, Madiba, Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu in the way that you referenced. Does this interest you, this dichotomy? And how important is it? Do you think that this perception is redressed and rebalanced? You know, part of what we’re trying to do with Stories Africa, is to actually inspire to point out that there are abundant examples of great leadership on the continent of progressive leaders are people innovating in policy and in enterprise, how do you see the importance of this issue of perception? 

JC: Perception is reality, perceptions are very powerful. I can see why the perception that African lacks effective leaders exists. Two years ago we published a report called ‘An Abundance of Young African Leaders, But No Seat At The Table’. I think that in itself just summarizes what the problem is. They are there, but they’re not at the table, So how do we get them to sit at the table? Another major challenge is that people don’t really know who is in that next layer of leadership. So when you go to conferences, the World Bank etc, it’s always the same people all the time. One of the things we’re doing to address that issue is developing a new portal called ‘Newleaders.africa’, we are trying to profile that next layer of leaders to raise their profile so they are discoverable and people know who they are to shine the spotlight on them, therefore bringing these opportunities to the fore. Therefore, the way I’d characterize this is that there are two layers of leaders. On one hand, theres the usual suspects, then that other level down, which is struggling to emerge. They need to be given the space to speak at conferences in favour of providing new perspectives,  to venture into government, policymaking and to sit on boards. There’s a critical mass of them. I’m appealing to governments to begin to open up those spaces to let them in. We have made suggestions of the mechanism that they can use to start to bring them in and to leverage their talents. Because it’s a win-win. We’re trying to co create the Africa that we want to see.