Renowned journalist and legal practitioner Samson Lardy Anyenini has criticised the state of leadership in Africa, describing it as a significant obstacle to the continent’s progress.

In his thought-provoking address at the 58th Congregation of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), he implored the graduating class to reject the status quo and take up the mantle of transformative leadership.

Citing alarming statistics, Anyenini revealed the paradox of Africa’s wealth in natural resources juxtaposed against its persistent poverty.

“Africa possesses 40% of the world’s gold, 90% of its chromium and platinum, and 65% of its arable land,” he noted, and added “Yet, it remains a symbol of poverty and underdevelopment, reliant on external aid while its own resources are mismanaged or stolen.”

He lamented Ghana’s dependence on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3 billion bailout, contrasting it with Occupy Ghana’s findings that nearly three times this amount is lost annually to corruption. He also referenced Prof. Stephen Adei’s assertion that the scale of corruption has only increased.

In a scathing critique of misplaced priorities, Anyenini questioned Ghana’s annual expenditure on Independence Day celebrations. “What are we truly celebrating when we remain economically dependent 66 years on?” he asked. He applauded Tanzania’s recent decision to redirect Independence Day funds toward building school dormitories and infrastructure, calling it a model of pragmatic leadership.

Touching on environmental mismanagement, he condemned the recurring devastation caused by the spillage of the Bagre Dam and the recent Akosombo Dam flooding, which displaced thousands. “These disasters highlight the failure to harness natural resources for the benefit of the people,” he said.

Anyenini challenged the graduands to lead by example, rejecting corruption and indiscipline while embracing accountability and purpose-driven leadership.

“Africa needs leaders who will turn the curse of poor leadership into an opportunity for progress,” he declared, saying “You have been trained not just to succeed individually but to transform your communities and nation. The time for change is now.”

58^TH CONGREGATION OF THE KNUST – 26^TH & 27^TH DAYS OF NOVEMBER, 2024 (MORNING & AFTERNOON SESSIONS)

Good morning. I hope I have the permission of the Provost to stand of the protocol already established.

Congratulations on your well-deserved reward today, after years of hard-work in this prestigious University. I was fortunate to be here for my postgraduate-LLB between 2006 and 2008. We must have been the second batch after the VC Prof. Andam led administration introduced the KNUST Law-Faculty. But I had been here before I could be admitted into the University of Ghana after completing Asanteman Secondary School. Yes, I was here gardening and washing in the homes of two lecturers, and hawking and running errands for students. Often, the expectation of speakers handed this assignment is that they will tell their personal success stories to motivate graduands. I intend to do a different thing, to provoke you to leave here to pursue Plans and Purposes – Plans, Purposes and Pursuits.   

So, I will tell you three stories and one. My goal is expressed in all three. You are the central character in the fourth.

You are already a failure if you stepped out of this congregation without a Plan and a Purpose in your Pursuits.

I know your preoccupation, justifiably, may be an immediate focus on your personal circumstances and that of your families. But I can assure you that will be taken care of if Ghana and significance at this time of certain curse of leadership in Africa.

One, oil was 18% of their GDP only two decades ago. Earlier it contributed as much as 50% of the GDP. It became only 1.2% and then less than 1% with services esp. tourism leading. Your training is to be of service. The United Arab Emirates’ Dubai grew its GDP from $11b to $101b between 1995-2015. They have been deliberate in executing development to a plan. That 'desolate' place has a green revolution to induce the rain they lack. I was shocked to do over an hour's speed-drive from Abu Dhabi city into the desert and seeing irrigated trees from start to end of that drive. They had a plan; they had a purpose and they pursued it. It always takes one person to rally a family, a community, a nation, even the world around Plans, Purposes and Pursuits. The Sheik CEO, Al Maktoum, is behind what makes Dubai a favourite destination in the world today. Their airport international airport has become one of the busiest in the world handling 87m passengers and over 1.81 m tones of cargo with almost 500 thousand aircraft movements there in 2023.  

Two, the Franco-Germany problem saw Cold War conferences turned to forging a European unity. The war maps would give way to peacetime maps. The Schuman Plan that gave birth to the European Coal and Steal Community became the blueprint for the EU. An ordinary civil servant who became the Chief Planning Officer of the French Government, Jean Monnet was the brain behind it. In his memoirs, we learn how he quietly observed the problem, chose a solitary life at the countryside, thought, hatched the plan and pushed it through his bosses to turn a war into a lasting blessing for Europe. He was the man, unknown and quietly behind the success of political leaders. He, unavoidably, did not escape becoming a founding father of the EU. Plans, Purposes and Pursuits.

Three, the 225 square miles Island of fisher folk was mocked as a basket case. A senior British official had remarked they could manufacture fish hooks there. The point being that there was nothing an investor could seek in Singapore. Unlike Ghana, they no gold, bauxite, cocoa or any such resource. But the story of the East Asian economic miracle, emerging from third world to first world, has certainly become an economic master plan that those miss it are not deemed complete economists, or at all. From 1965 to 1975, the value of foreign asset holdings in manufacturing increased twenty-four-fold, from 157 million to 3, 739 million dollars. In Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas, we read about his single-minded approach to getting his country, with labor but no raw material to exploit to what it is today. He said “if a thing works, let’s work it.” His obsession for hard-work, discipline and integrity built the Plan, Purposes and Pursuits that saw Singapore that got independence in 1965, after being expelled by Malaysia, almost a decade after Ghana, take a leap in that dark to be a global example today.

Here is the fourth story. What’s your role as the central character in it?

The UN environment programme tells us what we live and know, that Africa is rich in natural resources ranging from arable land, water, oil, natural gas, minerals, forests and wildlife. The continent has 40% of the world’s gold and up to 90% of its chromium and platinum. The largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum and uranium are in Africa. Africa hosts 65% of the world’s arable land. This means Africa ought to be rich, not the symbol of poverty and underdevelopment. It must feed the world and never be faced with hunger and starvation because Russia is at war with Ukraine. Ghana’s economy must not collapse because of bombs thrown in countries millions of miles away.

Our youth seek greener pastures abroad or die trying. Some of the population starve and die of common malaria. Our leaders go abroad cup-in-hand. Ghana is at the IMF for three billion dollars when same amount of three billion dollars is unaccounted for each year due to corruption. Prof. Stephen Adei believes this figure must more than double today in the corruption enterprise. Occupy Ghana audited five of the annual Auditor-General’s Reports and found money stolen or misused that ought to have been retrieved was almost three times what we are at the IMF for.

Africa’s youth with a chance to get an education in Europe and China are helping build their economies. Ghana does not produce even 1% of the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of poultry it consumes.

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the similar ones before this do not reflect beyond the paper they write these goals on. Mo Ibrahim reports that in 2017, over 53% of surveyed members of extremist groups in Africa were between 17 and 26 years old when they joined. The offer of employment was the most frequently cited incentive at the time of recruitment. In 2015, over 86% of all African-educated physicians working in the US were trained in Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. One in ten doctors working in the UK comes from Africa. In that year, doing a documentary for the BBC, I found that Ghanaian doctors in New York alone far outnumbered the total number of doctors in Ghana.

More than 60% of Africa’s population is an energetic youth whose leaders have spent decades and generations promising them heaven and delivering them hell. This year, Ghana spent money on 6th March to celebrate Independence Day. The reality though is that what we celebrate is rather the fact that we are not economically independent but still dependent 66 years on? Tanzania has realized this is wasteful by cancelling the ridiculously expensive but unnecessary Independence Day ritual. In 2022 it channeled the $445,000 budget for the celebration into building school dormitories. In 2020, President Samia Hassan’s predecessor, John Magufuli diverted the Independence Day funds into supporting medical facilities and to build a road in Dar es Salaam in 2021.

Each year, to preserve the Bagre Dam, authorities in Burkina Faso spill it. This causes flooding that destroys not only farms and homes in parts of the upper and northern regions, but human lives are also lost. These regions are among the poorest in the country. They are agrarian. There are hardly reliable rains to propel a bumper harvest each farming season. In fact, the land gets so dry and hot to killing by the heat stroke cerebrospinal meningitis CSM.

Ten of thousands were displaced and a humanitarian crisis ensued when the floodgates of the Akosombo Dam were opened recently in 2023.

Scarce water resources that must be harnessed for badly needed energy and assurance of food security must not rather wreak havoc. It hit me really hard when a concerned successful entrepreneur drove this point home to me when authorities commenced the spillage.

You have been trained not to become part of the corruption and indiscipline. But to see the curse of leadership in Africa as an opportunity to make a difference in your generation.

The world is literally in your palms on your tablets. If you are Pursuing a Plan and Purpose, you will not waste your life on needless stuff on social media – that’s the wrong obsession. Your parents, benefactors, KNUST and the State have invested in your knowledge acquisition here over the last ¾ years for a purpose. I invite you to lean from Jean Monnet, Lee Kuan Yew and Al Maktoum to have and Pursue good Plans and Purposes in integrity.

Congratulations!

Samson Lardy ANYENINI