10 General Lessons from my Mandela Washington Fellowship in the United States
The Mandela Washington Fellowship is the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) delivered annually and fully funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). The Fellowship was instituted in 2014 by President Barrack Obama’s administration and has graduated over 5,800 Fellows made up of young leaders from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fellows selected for the Fellowship are accomplished leaders who have established records of promoting innovation and positive impact in their communities and countries.
Visit https://www.mandelawashingtonfellowship.org/apply/ for the Fellowship’s eligibility requirements; application closes by the 13th of September.
I was selected to participate in the 2022 cohort of the Fellowship to study Public Management at the Texas Tech University, Lubbock. Through a combination of academic and non-academic activities, the Fellowship succeeded in inspiring me to look out for the collective good of Africa as a continent. It establishes the fact that Africa is not poor as a continent, the continent has far more developmental potential than it’s current development status.
Beyond inspiring the need to collaborate to achieve the African development dream, the fellowship experience made me have an introspective assessment of my core strengths and weaknesses as a leader; it helped me to understand and accept my top strengths and weaknesses, demobilize my weaknesses and convert them to strength. It also built my capacity to identify and optimize the strength of others for collective results and shared success, as well as the dangers and drawbacks associated with leaders expecting their team members/followers, and people generally, to match their energy level without due consideration on the individual’s core strengths and weaknesses — I term this “Team Optimization”.
Another major highlight for me was the opportunity to serve and touch lives through community service. These community service activities gave me fulfilling opportunities to positively impact vulnerable people that I don’t know directly and may never meet — this, for me, is self-satisfying and aligned with one of my core values; HELPING.
From activities during the Fellowship and interaction with professionals in the United States, below are 10 general lessons I learned and think will be useful for young leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa and in developing nations generally.
1. Socioeconomic challenges are everywhere in the world, who and how you choose to address yours is what makes the difference. That is, the competence and governance approach of the political leadership of your country will determine how quickly you can overcome your development challenges.
2. Developing nations need an independent judiciary, an enforced legal system, and a conscientious citizenry to advance beyond their current weak socioeconomic state. The effectiveness and impartiality of the legal/judicial system are critical to the advancement of a society, either in the enforcement of rights, protection of economic freedom, or investment attraction.
3. The emergence of the middle-income class, quality education, and economic participation of women is critical to addressing the issue of poverty and the teeming population of African countries. The growth of the middle-income class will drive the consumption-production nexus while increasing women's economic empowerment will optimize their under-exploited potential for national growth.
4. ‘Big problems do not always require big solutions, sometimes all that is required is just a simple and cheap fix. Developmental challenges do not necessarily require huge financial investment, sometimes, intermediate fixes will bring immediate gains and better prepare the system for a more sophisticated and sustainable fix; you just need to think outside the box.
5. Corruption thrives because people don’t believe there will be proportionate rewards for their labor. To eradicate corrupt practices in developing nations, a merit-driven system must be established in the private, NGO, and public sectors. Corruption will become easier to combat if merit/competence and fairness are the basis for recruitment, promotion, and service delivery across all sectors of the economy.
6. People will always be people! Humans have a default incentive to always do the things that satisfy their personal interests (private gains), even if it doesn’t result in the public’s good. It is important for institutions, platforms, and individuals committed to promoting public value to always consider the behavioral tendencies and natural incentives of people in their programming. This way, private gains with high tendencies of negative externalities can be reduced and members of the society converted into aficionados of public value creation.
7. In view of the above, Public service is beyond being a government staff, it’s about creating public value — anyone who creates public value is a public servant. Citizens must stop seeing their civil and public servants as the only people saddled with the responsibility of creating values that benefits other members of society.
8. Developing nations need to optimize collaborative governance models for inclusive growth; they must harness the resources of the public and the private sector to grow from within. This typically begins with the government being transparent and responsive, creating the culture and the platform for the non-state actors to participate actively in the development process.
9. For young leaders, focusing on your sphere of influence will bring speedy results while working on expanding the sphere of influence for a larger impact. Put considerable energy into what is within your control as you work on social impact projects, you can expand your influence using your achievements from working within your sphere of control.
10. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. As a leader, while aiming for perfection or a perfect system, don’t forget to celebrate the good ones currently working. Always acknowledge your little achievements and turn them into your motivation; never let the quest for perfection deny you of the immediate opportunities available for incremental gains.
These are 10 general lessons from my learnings through the Mandela Washington Fellowship. What are your thoughts on these 10 lessons? Please share.
