Crises of leadership and the ethical grounds of revolution in Africa

Abstract

Leadership is conceived as a vocation to service backed by authority to exercise administrative powers
not for any personal gains but for the good and development of the people and the state. The
leadership in Africa seems to derail from this rather noble understanding of leadership while tilting
towards the egocentric idea of leadership where there is a shift from the people centered leadership to
the person centered leadership and where the interest of the leader and his group is protected. This
leads to underdevelopment in most African states and a protracted suffering of the citizens of these
states which often comes in form of mismanagement of funds, abuse of human right and wanton
discrimination in the state. The need to survive these long sufferings has led some people to
demonstrations against the government which often come in form of civil disobedience and more
recently revolution in some African countries. This work examines ethical rounds of these revolutions
while asserting that no matter how moral a revolutionary movement is, care should be taken to avoid
damage that will create more problems instead of solving them.