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Whereas leadership has existed on the continent of Africa as long as African peoples therein, the study of the same is limited in scope, depth and availability. Even as African scholars decry this dearth of available literature, they are at the same time actively involved in remedying the situation. In this chapter, the author attempts to answer a couple of questions: what is African about African Leadership? How can we engage in radical scholarship of African leadership? The author concludes with an invitation to readers of the edited volume to answer those two questions for themselves, as well as allow the chapters to help them rethink their own position and practices, arguing that leadership scholarship is always about both theory building and enhanced practice.

After several years of political emancipation from colonial rule, it is time for African nations to do the same economically. Our analysis indicates that the current political leadership environment is VUCA laden and complicated, leading to grand challenges on the continent. Therefore, the old political leadership models are inadequate for addressing the African VUCA and leadership landscape, hence, the inability to achieve the needed economic advancement. We propose a paradigm shift in political leadership for the continent to bring the decades-long desire for economic freedom to fruition by adopting the relevant organizational science and corporate leadership models for political leadership effectiveness in this complex and dynamic environment. We accomplish this by integrating three frameworks to derive nascent management and leadership capabilities relevant to the new African political leadership context and to ensure current and future leadership readiness for this new environment.

Leadership is basically about influence and ability to cultivate followership. This chapter examined the nature of indigenous socio-political leadership in Africa using Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nigeria as caselets and compared this with the post-colonial or modern-day leadership realities. A survey was conducted among senior executives at Lagos Business School, Nigeria, with a sample size of 200 persons, to find out their perception of the African indigenous leadership system. An overwhelming 90% believe that culture plays a big role in shaping African leadership style. However, two-thirds of the respondents agreed that Africa lacks proper institutional structures to support good leadership, thus encouraging corruption (97% of the respondents) and non-accountability among the leaders. Also, only 5% thought cultural orientation was the reason why the African followers do not hold their leaders accountable. In other words, it is not in the African culture not to hold leaders accountable for their actions. So, what went wrong? We attempted a deeper look at the effect of colonial rule and the attendant militarisation of the African continent. Our conclusion is that the colonisation of the continent by Europe brought significant distortion to the traditional African indigenous leadership institutions and the psyche of the African leader and the followers alike. Post-colonial Africa has witnessed 133 recorded coups d’etat between 1952 and 2016. This chapter is recommended to all those who seek a deeper understanding of the nature of the African indigenous leadership practices and the factors that have shaped these over the years.

Women of Power Revisited: African Women in Leadership through the Ages, Space, Time, and Governance chapter provides an overview of what Africa has witnessed as the world's greatest civilizations through the stories of four of her Queens. The chapter examines women in leadership positions in ancient Africa: namely, Makeda, referred to as Queen of Sheba; Queen mother of Ejusu, Yaa Asantewaa of Ashanti; Queen Nzinga of Angola; and Hatshepsut. Africa has an indomitable spirit that consists of different forms of texts representing the rich diversity that constitute the great civilizations and empires the world has ever had. The chapter challenges the perpetuated notion that Africa is mostly jungle and uninhabited except for Egypt. It is this stereotyped image of Africa that prompted us to write about the four African Queens to illuminate salient features of African Indigenous women in leadership and how it can be applied in contemporary institutions.

The discussion is anchored on spirituality and womanism as our discursive frameworks. We also evoke creation stories which provide the essence of beginning of settlements of humans on our planet earth with particular focus on African Indigenous women's contribution to leadership. In addition, the chapter highlights the colonial oppression, and the current colonial legacies that she is struggling to deal with, including political and economic leadership. The emphasis is to disavow the Eurocentric and colonial fallacy that Africa is without history, without structure, and without kings and queens. This cannot be done without understanding the beginning of African-centered leadership. It is with this understanding that chapter embarked on the journey or path of decolonizing leadership models in our institutions.

This qualitative descriptive research study served to clarify sustained social and economic natures of African business innovation and entrepreneurial development leadership. The research question included interviewed African leader participants (5), “How do you describe your experience in African leadership?” In-depth phone interview responses detailed familiar leadership words and phrases about historic, cultural, and economic environments. African leaders described how they understand, discover, observe, and share perspectives on African leadership experiences for personal hardship, survival, and societal, cultural, physical, and organizational change. Using phenomenological research methods, transcript analysis of interview experience responses integrated common properties. Verbatim transcriptions, and reading, sifting, combining, reducing, and interpreting the data collection resulted in thematic coding and categorizing. Investigation results included interpreted meaning for facilitated interactions in African leadership descriptions. Study conclusions highlighted many, varied, and unusual pathways for African leadership, rather than a single model. Sensitivities to participative, divergent, and non-linear thinking characterized transformational African leadership styles (Green, 2014). Possible research implications contributed to future work, connecting the study findings with Network Theory.

Leadership studies, as an academic discipline and field of practice, have predominantly been developed in relation to Western forms of knowledge, norms, and cultural practices. Knowledge and ways of practicing leadership in Sub-Saharan Africa contexts are often unseen or marginalized in formal leadership studies literature. This is also true for the way leadership is practiced throughout the networks of the African Diaspora. The influence of uniquely African ways of knowing, doing, and experiencing leadership is even more challenging in the context of the African Diaspora. Often contextualized within the legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trades, and increasingly shaped by contemporary dynamics of globalization, the African Diaspora and leadership exist at the intersection of multiple cultures and contexts. Leadership theory and practice must account for these inter- and multicultural contexts to better understand and practice leadership in the African Diaspora. The objective of this chapter is to develop a collective, constructionist, and practice frame capable of teasing apart cultural and contextual influences of leadership in the African Diaspora. This is not a comprehensive account of approaches to African Leadership, but instead a preliminary effort to mark out collective, constructionist, and practice approaches to leadership in the African Diaspora as it exists in practice and might inform future research and leadership learning and development efforts.

African women religious have inherited both the cultural and historical concepts of leadership. To understand what motivates them in their service to the poor and to appreciate their need for leadership skills as opposed to proficiency in specific areas of service (nursing, teaching, and counseling), the authors provide a backdrop in the historical and cultural development of African nations.

Political leadership is decisive in the development of people and their communities. Bad leadership ushers in general stagnation and underdevelopment, while good leadership has the potential to transform people and their communities positively. African leadership is to be blamed for Africa’s underdevelopment. Concern was more regarding postcolonial leadership in Africa with having and keeping (consolidating) political power than using such power to develop the continent’s abundant natural resources. For Africa to come off its development quack mire and face the future with hope, there is need for a clean break from the past generation of political leaders. This is critical because the leaders of old generation are trying to position their stooges to take over power as the case in Gabon, Togo, DRC, Cameroon, etc. Africa has 60% youthful population and needs a youthful leadership abreast with the challenges of globalization and translation of such challenges into opportunities within the African context. At present, the responsibility of Africa's future lies with its youthful civil society. Through its role of monitoring governance and promoting and protecting rights, it has developed a rich experience across Africa. The Arab spring brings along with it the hope of leadership change on the continent. Firstly, it is a clean break from the gerontocracy. Secondly, it is motivation by the need to improve on the socioeconomic livelihood of the people. Lastly, it is supported by the African academia and diaspora. The failure of this emerging leadership class to usher in strong and transparent institutions to carry Africa forward would be suicidal.

This chapter discusses a number of well-known African Philosophies of Education (APE) that could significantly improve the development of an international educational leadership curriculum. These include Preparedness/Preparationism, Utilitarianism/Functionalism, Communalism; Holisticism and Perennialism, Ethnophilosophy, Ubuntu, Community, Reasonableness, Moral Maturity, Maat or Ma'at African philosophies discovered from papyrus manuscripts including Imhotep, The Teachings of the Vizier Ptahhotep, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, and The Dialogue of a Man with his Soul, Kemit and As Above so Below, etc. In so doing, I identify the salient values of these philosophies, bringing out their qualities as well as their limitations, and discussing ways in which they could be incorporated into the contemporary field of developing an international leadership curriculum. This chapter first reviews contemporary literature on African Indigenous Education (AIE) and APE and their relevance in developing an international leadership curriculum using a descriptive and analytical interpretive approach then proposes an epistemic leadership theoretical framework to guide the delivery of APE in educational leadership learning. Such a leadership curriculum framework could be developed as part of the de-colonial epistemic movement within the Global South. The chapter concludes that while the link between APE, policy and practice is significant and new in the context of educational leadership curriculum research, its survival depends on the establishment of such a de-colonial epistemic theoretical framework.