Across the African continent women are increasingly taking up leadership roles, engaging in high level decision making, contending with power and impacting our societies.
Whereas, our numbers in these spaces is far from sufficient, women’s leadership in Africa can no longer be ignored or under-valued. In leading, African women confront a clutch of unique circumstances, ranging from negative social cultural norms, gender – stereotyping, structural discrimination and informal barriers to access to power. `Additionally, African women leaders operate within contexts of underdevelopment, poverty, weak governance institutions, social and economic inequalities and a political culture often anchored on ethnic-based clientelism.
If context influences leadership, then it would be safe to assert that African women leaders engage with power in unique and atypical ways. Whether leading at the helm of public sector institutions or civil society organisations, African women must access and deploy power using idiosyncratic and uncommon techniques. Their leadership styles, decision-making tools and behaviour are distinctive because they occur in specific environments and conditions. African women’s experiences and actions in the course of leadership give rise to extraordinary stories which provide understandings about their brand of leadership and also paint a colourful picture of the evolution of our societies. When they recount their stories and listeners in turn repeat, analyse, and drawn lessons from them, a culture of women’s leadership in Africa is formed. ‘All culture is created through the telling of stories. We tell each other stories, and then later forget that they were stories; they become our realities.’ (Senge, P 1996). Unless women’s leadership endeavours become our reality, their partnership in creating the peaceful, politically stable and the prosperous Africa that we all desire, will never attain its salient place in our continent’s political and social consciousness.
African women leaders are by no means flawless. Some are impactful, inspirational and successful, others stumble and fall in the course of their leadership journeys, whilst a number find themselves consumed by the vicissitudes of power. However varied and even imperfect women’s engagement with leadership and power is; we have a right to lead and to seize opportunities to participate in the re-shaping our communities. Consequently, it is imperative that our stories are told, not by others but by African women themselves. These stories are products of personal contemplation. They expose individual conduct, motivations and intimate ideas about leadership in Africa. They uncover the contours of power and power play from a perspective and lens that is yet to be fully understood and appreciated. Through their own stories, women leaders unleash their power as architects of a new culture of leadership in Africa. Besides this, women’s leadership stories serve to re-engineer the stereo-typical construct of leadership in Africa, helping transition it from a male dominated endeavour to a domain of gender inclusion and symmetry.
It is often said that, women hold up half the sky. This metaphor makes greater sense when African women leaders tell their own stories and when listeners (especially the new generation of emerging leaders) assess, internalize and reiterate the learnings they hear, as essential components of our culture.
*This article is inspired by “ Leadership Action and Culture” – Rick Tate and Art Smuck, 1988
Senge, P: (1996) Quoted in: Tate, R & Smuck, A (1988) Leadership Action and Culture
Reflections on International Women’s Day 2025