Tradocratic Leadership Style and Its Imperative for African Development: Towards a Theory of Leadership for Africa

Abstract

The paper examined the leadership dilemma faced by the African continent in its quest to
make meaningful progress and development since independence from colonial Europe.
After more than half a century of self-determination, many African countries are still in
search of a leadership model that can lead their people out of excruciating poverty, bad
governance by a privileged few, looting of the public treasury, political instability,
economic crisis, infrastructural decay, non-functional educational systems, high crime
rates, and opportunistically tyrannical leadership. It is noteworthy that African countries
trying to practise the western democratic leadership style, as being practised in Europe
and America, have had tremendous challenges as cultural differences were not
considered in adopting such models. The tradocratic leadership style being proposed in
this article combines the ideals of African traditional leadership styles, the traits theories,
the Ubuntu philosophy and western democratic ideals into a truly African model of
leadership that is culture and value-based. It is a conceptual study based on a
comprehensive review of existing historical books and articles, management and
leadership studies by previous authors. Conclusion drawn from the study indicated that
the tradocratic leadership style, if adopted, could be the rescuing model that can
transform Africa and place the continent on the path of development.