Prof. Alabi Challenges African Leaders To Embrace Strategic Leadership

The African continent needs leaders who are capable of spearheading its transformational agenda, Professor Goski Alabi, Strategic Leadership Lecturer, School of Graduate Studies, University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), has said.

She said such leadership would be able to plan and look into the future, and prepare the people to develop the competences and the capacities that they need to be able to take up the challenges that confront them now and those likely to confront them in the near future.

Prof Alabi made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the side-lines of the 2018 edition of the UPSA's Strategic Leadership Colloquium, on the theme: 'Strategic Leadership: The panacea for organisational sustainability in the 21st Century'.

The annual event which was held for final year students pursuing Masters of Business Administration (MBA) - Total Quality Management and Master of Philosophy (MPhil)/Master of Science (MSc) Leadership was aimed at fostering discussions on what the students found out during their field visits to several companies they chose to research about.

The students made presentations to a panel on eleven companies including; Trans Global Logistics limited, Pizza Hut Ghana, Duraplast, Street Xpress, Atlantic Phones, Look Security Systems, M Plaza Hotel, Western Publications and J. Stanley-Owusu and Company Limited.

Prof Alabi, who is also the Dean, Centre for International Education and Collaboration (CIEC), UPSA, underscored the need to develop a continent where its people could be proud of, as well as being proud of handing over to the generations to come.

She was of view that, in that regard, as a continent Africans had not been able to do this very well, adding that 'a typical example is the perennial flooding we have in Ghana".

"What have we done since independence to ensure we avoid such situations," she quizzed.

Prof Alabi noted that Africa's challenge was not merely the challenge of governance; but firstly the challenge of strategic leadership.

She told the GNA that, leadership was not about what leaders do alone; stating that "there is a need to have an alignment between the sense of identity of the leader and that of the followers, for leadership to achieve its goals".

Mr Felix Nyante, Registrar, Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana, said the cultivation of leaders with exceptional skills was critical to the development of Ghana and the continent at large.

He said strategic planning was important to any organisation, because it provided a sense of direction and also outlined measurable goals.

Mr Nyante, who chaired the function, therefore, tasked the students to think outside the box, plan for the future and be strategic to help meet societal needs.