The Blended Representation Principle is a democratic catalyst for the common good

The Blended Representation Principle (BRP) is a solutions strategy for addressing leadership and governance challenges stemming from the principles of representation, transparency, accountability, and participation in Africa- universal principles pivotal to the practice of democracy anywhere in the world.

Simply, BRP stipulates that power be shared between leaders selected on Western democratic ideals (multiparty politics, elections etc), and leaders chosen based on traditional African norms and common norms. In other words, BRP is a fusion of traditional African and Western principles of representation, transparency, accountability, and participation for organizing the design and shape of statehood according to needs, realities, and aspirations of target communities.

The rationale for this proposition is three-fold:

• Commonsensical – an issue of Elites vs Masses politics. The head and body, or rulers and the ruled are not in sync. Contemporary politics is dominated by the leadership of the elites, while the leadership of the masses has been marginalized in transformative development.
• Historical: an issue of the Elites mired deeply in politics of imitation, assimilation, and wholesale replication of outside models.
• Forestalling Transnational Elites resource accumulation practices within the global village. Both types of leadership have metamorphosed into junior partners of Transnational Elite Alliances which superintend over the exploitation of resources of the continent which benefit a few at the expense of the masses.

Combined effects on politics and development in Africa include:

• restrictive participation in politics and development;
• absence of transparency in the use of public resources;
• lack of accountability for policy outcomes;
• low sense of belonging of the masses to the nation; and
• sycophantic confidence in public officials.

Africa requires Tran-Serve leadership (TL) - transformational servant leaders which can only be engineered through the BRP solutions pathway. TL will enable better governance for improved service delivery in areas and sectors instrumental to peaceful coexistence of communities on the continent.

Forefront sectors are as follows:

• Health Services - balancing orthodox and plant medicine;
• Education: inculcate values and principles of care for the commons, and intergenerational responsibility;
• Agriculture: feeding the people through seed to plate practice of systematic transformation of small-scale production into attractive and profitable ventures covering all aspects of the value chain.
• Labor Mobility: acquisition of digital skills tackling the youth bulge phenomenon.
• Technology Applications: in the areas of construction, conservation, and communication.
• Housing and Household Equipment: improving quality of source materials.

BRP provides a milieu for democracy to flourish on needs, realities, and aspirations of target beneficiaries It is thus an obligation of African intellectuals and ruling elites to generate knowledge, ideas, and policies on their cultural heritage to engineer BRP style of governance and democracy as a catalyst for the common good.