Fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa: relevant cultural values

ABSTRACT

A foremost challenge to the realisation of the accelerated economic growth of the demographic dividend in Africa remains the commitment of the region’s political leadership to creating the enabling contexts to maximise the potential of its youthful population. This viewpoint considers three critical African cultural mores – the reverence-for-posterity norm; leader-as-community-proxy culture; and the elder tradition – that offer unique levers for fostering political leadership for the demographic dividend in Africa. Strategies for successfully tapping these cultural traditions require further research.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance and public policy
• Gender and diversity
• Sub-Saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Chimaraoke O. Izugbara is a Senior Research Scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center Nairobi, Kenya.

Tizta Tilahun is a Post-Doctoral Research Scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center Nairobi, Kenya.

Hilda Owii is a Research Officer at the African Population and Health Research Center Nairobi, Kenya.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the reviewers for their critical insights on this article. For taking an interest in this paper and critiquing our first draft, we thank Dr Chi-Chi Undie. Thanks also to Yemeserach Belayneh and Senait Tibebu of the Packard Foundation for encouraging us to begin to build out an Afrocentric perspective on the demographic dividend debate. The first author gratefully thanks Olav Jakob and Ndudim Echebe for the relentless intellectual punches they traded with him over this paper.

ORCID

Chimaraoke O. Izugbara http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4908-1131

Tizta Tilahun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3842-9844

Hilda Owii http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7148-0097

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation: [Grant Number 2016-67708].