Failure of Leadership Portends Continued Struggles in Africa

This post is about the perpetually dismal economic condition of the African continent and my assertion that such failure is primarily caused by a lack of leadership in African nations.

I recently overheard my daughters singing along to the popular Shakira song Waka Waka. It’s a fun, rather addictive melody made world-famous by her stunning performance at the closing ceremonies of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg. The rest of the day I found myself reflexively humming the chorus “…this time for Africa.”

As I repeated this phrase it got me thinking about the vast and beautifully diverse but still tragically impoverished continent of Africa and whether it may be, as some have suggested, on the cusp of a dramatic period of economic growth. In recent decades we’ve seen explosive growth in other regions of the world such as South America, the Far East and, most recently, in Asia.

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Discover What Motivates You

This post examines what we know about motivation from recent studies and my personal experience.

It’s such an emotional rush to walk into a clean kitchen. Well, it is when it’s been cleaned by your child. When you have four children you just get used to your house never being quite as tidy as you would like it to be. And when those children get old enough to make themselves something to eat, you can pretty much plan on not seeing a clean kitchen again for a while. So it was a bit of a surprise to see the kitchen so thoroughly cleaned.

I could feel my muscles relax as though I were getting a Swedish massage while standing there in the doorway. My eyes swept through the room, across the counters, table and stove–all clean. This is how life should be I thought with self-satisfaction, we’ve finally arrived. Could it really be true, all those years of cajoling our kids had finally paid off?
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