Great Leaders Erect Their Outfit on an Elevated Human Security & Rights Locus

African Union Summit 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Human Rights with a focus on the Rights of Women

Public Lecture - XCV, MMXV

Addressing Human Security through Leadership

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Professor of Public Policy, School of Graduate Studies,

College of Business and Economics, AAU

Abstract

The theme of the paper addresses leadership and public management challenges and reform in Africa, augured on the hypothesis that the relative potency of leadership requires a plural set of rules and governing institutions, which promote and protect rules of peaceful participation and competition and human security. Notwithstanding the fact that the effectiveness of leadership is intertwined with the notion of objectivity, a noxious illusion persists that a political civil service of the developmental state model would deliver superior public goods, prevails all over Africa. The recommendations augur on evolving a meritocratic state that can deliver visionary public spending, fiscal policy discipline and inward foreign direct investment; coupled with prudent oversight of financial institutions and legal security for labor and property rights -- a brand of governance that unleashes free enterprises in a pluralistic milieu. Good governance requires mediation of the different interests in society to reach a broad consensus in society on what is the best interest of the whole community and how this can be achieved. It also requires a broad and long-term perspective on what is needed for sustainable human development and how to achieve the goals of such development. This can only result from an understanding of the historical, cultural and social contexts of a given society or community. A society's well-being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of society.

Key words: civil service, governance, impartiality, leadership, objectivity

Slums are the litmus test of civilizations.

Robert Kaplan, the Coming Anarchy, Atlantic Monthly

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