Africa needs dynamic leaders — Prof. Delle

The Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) has said Africa needs dynamic and not speech-making leaders and has, therefore, called on African governments to roll up their sleeves and get down to the business for which they were voted into power.

“Most African governments have transformed leadership into speech-making platforms, organising and attending conferences while the real work for the socio-economic development remains undone.

Paradigm shift

“We need a paradigm shift in the African governance architecture, where the leadership rolls up their sleeves, descend from their ivory towers and joins the masses for rapid transformation,” Chairman of the CPP, Professor Edmund Nminyem Delle, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra.

Prof. Delle, who is also the leader of the CPP, noted that most African governments had reduced governance to euphoria and ceremonial mechanism with shows of opulence and political authority to the disadvantage of the ordinary citizen.

The CPP chairman, therefore, called on civil society actors, traditional and religious leaders, think tanks, the media as well as political parties, especially opposition party establishments, to constantly play active watchdog roles in the interest of the people.

Strategic thinking and planning

Prof. Delle said there was the urgent need for the African leadership to engage in strategic thinking and planning to prepare the population for emerging and future challenges.

The CPP chairman added that in contemporary complex societies, institutions that made the population survive and flourish needed proper leadership for their effective maintenance and urged African leaders to be creative and have a vision, as the growth and development of a nation depended on the quality of the leaders at any particular point in time.

“Without the right kind of leadership, there exist only chaos, confusion and frustration”.

He noted that the current political and economic problems besetting the African continent stemmed from the leadership crisis experienced over the past decades.

Leadership crisis

“Signs of leadership crisis are alarming and pervasive. There is a widespread loss of faith in our major institutions such as the judiciary and law enforcement agencies generally.

“There is an alarming breakdown of traditional values and discipline; corruption is more or less institutionalised and no serious attempts are being made to fight it, we need an urgent paradigm shift to save the continent,” Prof. Delle noted.

The CPP chairman called on current African governments to rise up to the changing trend in global governance, offer pragmatic solutions to the numerous problems facing the continent  and offer home-grown solutions.

He said the CPP would pursue the goal of peace, justice and security, and struggle for a new and equitable political, social and economic order for the total transformation of the continent.

CPP’s strategy

On the CPP’s strategy for re-organisation, Prof. Delle said the party would roll out grass-roots re-engineering process through the constituencies to the regional and national levels to consolidate, deepen and project the party as a force in the Ghanaian political sphere.

Prof. Delle mentioned that the CPP would also create a platform to co-operate with other political parties and movements, which commit themselves to similar ideals, and strengthen Ghana’s democratic governance through active participation in governance as a prudent opposition party.