Spirituality and Ubuntu as the foundation for building African institutions, organizations and leaders

Abstract

It is widely argued that institutions and organizations are the building blocks of modern societies. However, African nations are characterized by an institutional void and ineffective organizations. In fact, even the effectiveness of informal institutions such as customs and traditions is now debatable. Therefore, this paper sets out to provide a novel approach for building effective organizations, leaders and people based on the foundation of spirituality and the African philosophy of Ubuntu. We coupled the concepts of spirituality and Ubuntu and advanced a framework and techniques to guide the development of African organizations and its people. We have provided theoretical and practical rationale for the use of spirituality and Ubuntu to augment the Western-based modern approach to managing organizations and their people.

Keywords:

• African leadership
• institution building
• management development
• spirituality
• Ubuntu