POVERTY AND LEADERSHIP FAILURE IN AFRICA: AN APPRAISAL

Abstract

Africa faces chronic poverty and leadership failure. Other continents of the world such as Europe, the Americas, Asia and others have successfully minimized or reduced the impact of poverty in their continents through the instrumentality of regional integration and cooperation. The African continent’s leaders transformed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to African Union (AU) to enable the region eradicate poverty and place the African countries both individually and collectively on the path of sustainable growth and development. However, African integration is yet to bear satisfactory fruits as Africa lags behind in poverty eradication despite the existence of a new economic plan called NEPAD (New Partnership for African Development). The study sets to examine why poverty is difficult to reduce and good governance achieved in Africa. Basically, the study is qualitative in outlook, utilizing mostly secondary data in its analysis. The findings reveal that Africa has the capacity to reduce or end poverty based on the availability of natural resources. What is lacking, however, is the absence of focused, innovative and mobilized leadership which makes good governance difficult. Thus, the study concludes by recommending among other things the creation of civil society organizations that are well focused and proactive to hold African leadership accountable.