by the We Will Lead Africa Founders
Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pixabay.
We Will Lead Africa (WWLA) is growing up. In the last quarter of this year, we will cross the threshold of 10 years since we, the WWLA Co-Founders Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, Judith Okonkwo, and Sarah Owusu, met at a conference. Back then, we griped together about the lack of African leadership representation and wisdom in that space. And then we woke up to the reality that we had to do something about it, centring African leadership narratives if we wanted our stories told.
We decided to build a movement of everyday African leaders, who are owning and telling their stories of impact for the continent and her diaspora. We thank you, the WWLA community of leaders, who have answered our call to share your work and stories in our volumes. We will continue to create platforms for sharing and inspiring everyday African leadership through storytelling. So, we asked ourselves in a recent conversation, what WWLA has meant to each of us personally; what it means to us ten years on; and why what we do here is important now, perhaps more than ever.
Sarah: Leadership beyond the mainstream
I think we need to break away from dominant leadership narratives that often emphasise individualism, extraction, and competition. We Will Lead Africa is about providing alternatives to that mainstream narrative, which I find to be too homogeneous, and prone to harmful outcomes. You don’t come to the things you achieve on your own. We need to make space for everyday leadership, collective leadership.
What we are recognising with WWLA is that there’s a collective that makes things possible, a way in which we do things together, ‘on the shoulders’ of those before us and around us, in community. I think WWLA showcases leadership that says you can lead from wherever you are. You don’t need to have the title, recognition, or formal authority to do so. This isn’t necessarily an African thing, but it reminds us in the African context to start where we are, with what we have.
The stories we showcase are leadership stories of people who aren’t necessarily perfect, but who are inquiring in the direction of something purposeful; finding solutions by doing something wholesome; and being of service to something greater than just the individual. That has integrity for me—not perfection, but a continuous pursuit of impact beyond me. Additionally, we’re trying to uplift impact that is for and about African people, countries, and communities. Leadership that brings about a material difference across our continent. By bringing in story, story telling, and invoking the Griot, we get at something that’s truly an African approach, an African type of leadership.
Judith: The power of stories and context
We Will Lead Africa is about creating a platform for our leadership voices, including those the mainstream does not highlight. That’s what we represent, and that’s what we want people to experience in the WWLA stories: the realisation that there are leaders doing extraordinary work on and for the continent. We also want the leaders who share their stories to have this space where they know they will be met, where there will not be dissonance between the stories they are telling and how the stories are shared. These are their stories.
WWLA is one answer to my inquiry and daydreaming for stories that tell the fuller narrative of African leadership, beyond the stereotypes and tropes of corruption and things not working. Like sitting beside an international businessperson complaining they could never find the leadership talent to get things done in Nigeria. That always rubbed me the wrong way. I knew how hard people worked, how smart they were. I just could not connect that single story with my lived experience of African talent and ability. I thought, what is the problem we are having here? Why is there no appreciation of leadership beyond a certain view or perspective? And for me, part of that was why aren’t our leadership stories out there—why don’t they even exist? Why aren’t there platforms we can look for?
Playing with those questions in my head and returning to the wondering child who would seek parables or stories from her heritage, I ended up thinking that, perhaps, the way to go was to dig into culture and find ways to link it to leadership. For many years, I thought about how I could play in that space and what that might look like. Could we have leadership development that was crafted based on or reflecting culture? These sorts of thoughts, I would think them often. Later, I would look to other African cultures beyond my Nigerian ones and start to explore them too for what they bring.
Yabome: African leadership as defiance and transformation
When I think about African leadership, the images I see are those of the African aunties who are full of wisdom. It is the wisdom I saw and felt that I don’t see and feel and experience in the same way in the Western world, where I have now lived more than half my life. So I know something’s missing in our human experiences of leadership here, and yet there’s this unspoken rule that this thing I keep trying to bring up isn’t valid. When I raise a perspective that may be foreign in a discussion, it can be met with silence, and then the conversation continues as if it wasn’t spoken. As if to say I don’t get to talk about it.
So my defiance and resistance on one hand, and the transforming and decolonising of my own mind on the other, is drawing on that well, and being okay with that. I have practised speaking and sharing what’s different until it’s becoming. Because it’s still becoming – the part of my bones that don’t question, in any space, if I should speak up about something I’m feeling in the way those aunties always did, with wisdom and truth.
If I want to use the analogy of a parable, I do and it’s okay. It’s part of my life experience. It’s part of the cultures and communities that have formed me. It’s the African part of me that I ought to be able to bring with me without second guessing, questioning, or feeling like it’s not as equally valid as quoting text by a leadership scholar from anywhere in the world. I might quote my father or mother or a parable while nobody nods, their eyes possibly rolling internally or externally. And that’s okay too. Because it’s also not about them. It’s about me authentically being who I am in the world and not apologising for it.
Courage, community, creativity
With this, our shared vision continues to be Africans owning and leading their own narratives; African leadership as a model of purposeful, authentic, and collaborative leaders who have the grit and courage to take leadership action to address the challenges and opportunities on the continent; and African peoples everywhere creating transformative outcomes for local communities and humanity at large. Just like the theme of our latest volume, it’s time for courage, community, and creativity.