Written by The WWLA Founders
Edited by Michelle Mocumbi
We pay tribute to the memory of Volume One Contributor Christopher Mulenga, who passed away in 2018. We never met or knew him, but the ripples of his impact reached us because he said YES to a call that resonated with this work. That even strangers like us mourn his passing is a testament to his undeniable leadership. RIP, sir. Thank you for your life of service, leadership and impact.
This blog post is a retrospective, a return to 2017 when we launched our first volume, and our reflections as We Will Lead Africa (WWLA) founders on the volume that started it all. It is the first in a series of reflections that we will publish this year, taking you on a journey through the WWLA series, volume by volume. Follow along.
Who will lead Africa?
Forward, onward, fully into the land of its potential.
To the realisation of the blossoming dream of prosperity held by so many, for so long, throughout this place we call home.
Again I ask, Who Will Lead Africa?
You, for who Africa runs in your veins, your consciousness, your very being. You, in all your colours, shades and hues, whose heart beats with the drumbeat of Africa. Who find home in the intermingling sounds of earth, animals and peoples communicating all at once; who know that the sky is broader and the sun bigger when viewed from African soil. Who bursts with joy and passion when you arrive in an African country, greeted with contradictions and cohabitations.
This is an African town crier’s call to you – yes, YOU.
You feel the groundswell of those that want to be part of the change. You know that transformation is happening, every day, in big and small ways. You are in action, working towards the prosperity of the continent.
You, the practitioners, business and community leaders, educators and entrepreneurs … everyday leaders, in every sector.
This town crier’s call was how we put out the call for what would become We Will Lead Africa: Volume One. The bold lines above were also how we opened the preface to the book. This was important contextualisation and signalling of what we set out to do. Our platform is storytelling through an Afrocentric lens. For that, the traditional call and response is what we naturally evoke, and it has become the backbone of all our volumes. We put out a town crier’s call to leadership, sometimes about specific topics pertinent to the future of the African continent and her peoples. We wait for the response from continental Africans and peoples of African descent in the diaspora, working towards the prosperity of Africa. This opening of Volume One serves as a powerful reminder of the call to hold on to the roots and practices that have served Africa and Africans, even as we adapt to the world as it is now and look for pathways to a better future for all.
As our incipient book, Volume One helped us define what we mean by We Will Lead Africa. We have told the story of how this work was launched based on our shared disconnect with the portrayal of African leadership in mainstream literature and media. The framing of WWLA was proposed by one of our co-founders, Yabome, based on her conference paper and research that articulated principles that seem to underline case studies of African leaders and leadership that are having a positive impact. Our idea was to create a platform that featured such case studies and reflected on African leadership at its best – as joyful practice and not only sacrificial. Together, the team discussed the principles and quickly found collective alignment with them. We explored how we might articulate and bring them to life through the vision and framing of WWLA. Those powerful descriptors for each word of the WWLAname became both an anchor and our promise.
We: Collaborative and accountable leaders.
Will: The leadership WILL, grit and courage to do something, anything, now and for the future, demonstrated through action-oriented and aspirational leadership.
Lead: Everyday leaders, motivated by service, in every sector, including emerging leaders from marginalised groups. They focused on a values-driven path, even if it is challenging.
Africa: A focus on a prosperous continent, where divides are bridged and leaders work across boundaries and borders to achieve broader success.
From the outset, Volume One insisted on showcasing the diversity and complexity of African experiences. In our preface, we evoked this complexity through the sights and sounds of contemporary Africa:
You, in who joy and passion bursts when you arrive at the airport of an African country and are greeted with a familiar yet always awe-inspiring scene of contradictions and cohabitations in swirls of bright colours: the Calvin Klein dresses and Dashiki tunics; a bucket on one’s head and a briefcase in another’s hand; iPhones, androids and tablets glittering in the sun while fax machines and typewriters reside on desks; children in back wraps, and suitcases in hands; local languages and imported languages; traditional greetings and hugs; a street preacher and hijabs; hip hop and soukous music; people walking into Mercedes-Benzes while a beggar child calls, and hawkers panhandle and push their wares.
Additionally, the volume set the practice we have maintained of foregrounding the multiplicity of Africa and Africans – urban and rural, traditional and contemporary, local and diasporic – reminding readers that African identities are layered, dynamic and uncontainable within narrow narratives.
In a similar vein, working on Volume One was also our opportunity to decide who the book was for and who should be included. We deliberated how to centre the ‘everyday African leader’, the meaning of ‘African’ itself, and connections to both the continent and the diaspora. We saw the decisions to hold an inclusive definition as a necessary and evolving effort to represent leadership as lived rather than merely titled. Furthermore, we confronted and took an honest view of the practical challenges. If we were looking for everyday African leaders, we were actively seeking doers who had often never seen themselves as leaders and had probably never thought of writing their stories. Our everyday leaders could also be traditional leaders who were not English speakers or writers. This meant taking the time to encourage and solicit leaders to write and making provisions that allowed someone’s story to be written and submitted, with permission, by another person. These are not challenges we have solved, but an enduring resolve that guides all our volumes and our intention to share stories that wouldn’t otherwise be told.
Volume One remains the blueprint that we are growing from. It yielded 30 leadership stories with a near-balance of 14 submissions from men and 16 submissions from women. (We saw this overrepresentation of female leadership as a positive signal of changes addressing the historical marginalisation of women in leadership in the patriarchal context of most of the continent.) Submitters represented all regions of the continent, many of whose work cuts across multiple countries on the continent from North, West, Central, East and South. There were eight submissions from leaders of Nigerian descent, which is appropriate for Africa’s most populous country.
Overall, the volume included:
- Eight stories on Literacy and Education
- Eight on Social Entrepreneurship, Change and Policy
- Five on Arts and Culture
- Four on Healthcare and Wellness
- Four on Media and Communications
- One on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. (As we reflect now, it is no wonder that we have subsequently dedicated a full volume to Technology, Science and Innovation to capture more leadership narratives from this sector.)
Ultimately, Volume One left us with inspirations that continue to reverberate throughout the subsequent volumes and guide us in our own work at WWLA and elsewhere. We list all 30 key leadership quotes/wisdoms (one from each chapter) for you here:
