7. Accelerating Africa’s Renaissance Using Contextual Holistic Leadership Development

Africa Rising is a common theme of many Pan-African and global conferences today, as seven of the 10 fastest developing economies globally are hosted on the continent. The development of this most naturally endowed but currently least socio-economically developed continent rests on its ability to improve its human development factor. This calls for a contextually relevant holistic leadership development approach as the efficacy of conventional leadership development approaches has been questioned, with many Western-trained leaders having struggled to translate their learning in Africa’s relational and collective context with non-linear thinking. In the same context, 25 exemplary Kenyan public leaders were identified and their qualitative study identified, among other things, the important roles of servant and transformational leaders who embody values, ethics, spirituality and cultural intelligence. This chapter discusses the identification of the constituent parts of a holistic leadership development model that can accelerate Africa’s Renaissance, through contextually efficacious training of effective next-generation executive leaders for Africa and the world, with global leadership development implications.