The Effect of Governance Model on Sustainable African Economies : A Case Study on Employment Opportunities for Technical Education Graduates

Abstract

Leadership and governance are crucial to planning and implementing how society use their natural resources for long term sustainable benefit, evaluating outcomes, and the shifts and corrections needed. By their very nature, they operate in a political and socio-economic context, and outcomes depend on political and social acceptance of objectives and their operational forms. This, in turn, enhances the mobilization of resources and their application to achieve set goals. They are of greater importance in country with multi-ethnic societies with scarce resources, to minimize tensions arising from differences in perspectives and actual conditions, as well as to create a political framework that can manage the development process even at individual level in spite of constraints. Governance refers to ‘a wide range of steering and rule-making related functions carried out by governments/decisions makers as they seek to achieve national objectives’ (World Health Organization, 2019). It includes the policies and systems structures that facilitate the regular operation of a political, social, organization and public system. Leadership has been defined as ‘the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal’ and includes elements of inspiring and directing (Ward Ward, 2019). This concept has been extended to apply to institutions as leaders (Washington, Boal, Davis, Greenwood, Oliver, Suddaby and Sahlin Washington et al., 2008). Leadership occurs at many levels of a system, and its characteristics, development and impact on the public systems have been analyzed variously (Hartley Hartley, 2008; West, Armit, Loewenthal, Eckert, West & LeeWest et al., 2015). This paper is descriptive in nature and has data collected from mainly secondary sources. It addresses the essential qualities for effective leadership and assesses its role in good governance and how resources are utilized for benefit and employment.