The Vision for Strategic Leaders for Sub-Sahara Africa in the Digital Economy

The Vision for Strategic Leaders for Sub-Sahara Africa in the Digital Economy

Kwabena Sabby | 2021

Abstract

In recent years Sub-Sahara Africa’s (SSA) has enjoyed economic growth to reduce poverty and the opportunity to develop innovative policies to transform the private sector for job creations. In the African Development Bank’s 2020 Economic Outlook for Africa, the bank cited Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cote d’Ivoire, Tanzania, and Benin as the fastest growing economies in SSA. However, the lack of leadership initiatives has prevented these countries from converting their economic potential into manufacturing innovations into job growth and expansion of the middle- and upper-class-income groups. Private sector organizations in the region lack visionary leaders who will invest in R&D programs and build innovative cultures to create products that will meet customers’ needs in the global market. The lack of strategic leaders is the primary challenge of transforming African natural resources into manufacturing products.

This paper aims to discuss a leadership failure and how SSA can develop the needed corporate leaders. The four objectives of the paper are: (a) how have leadership issues been addressed, (b) how SSA has failed to develop leadership structures from their culture, (c) the impact of building leadership structures with foreign cultures, (d) how SSA can use its cultural dimensions to develop transformational and strategic leaders required to restructure the private sector to compete in the digital economy. The paper concludes that transformational leaders, and strategic leaders, including those with global mindsets and innovative minds, will revamp the private sector to make SSA competitive in the digital economy.