African Leaders Thread

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987.[1][2] Viewed as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as "Africa's Che Guevara."[1][3][4][5]

 

Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.[1][6] He immediately launched the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent.[6] To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Men").[6] His foreign policies were centered around anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.[7] Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together."[6] On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy; while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.[6]

In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, he increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation, eventually banning unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans and be manipulated by powerful outside influences.[6] To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, counter-revolutionaries and "lazy workers" in peoples revolutionary tribunals.[6] Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).[1]

 

His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance as a defiant alternative to the neo-liberal development strategies imposed by the West, made him an icon to many of Africa's poor.[6] Sankara remained popular with most of his country's impoverished citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of an array of groups, which included the small but powerful Burkinabé middle class, the tribal leaders whom he stripped of the long-held traditional right to forced labour and tribute payments, and the foreign financial interests in France and their ally the Ivory Coast.[1][8] As a result, he was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d'état led by the French-backed Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987. A week before his execution, he declared: "While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas."[1]

[Carafaat]

Alpha, according to many sources the French goverment was behind the assasination of Thomas Sankara.

 

After his death they only found an old bike, matrass and some books in his house, nothing else. Showing there were indeed unselfish leaders who truely sacraficed themselves for the greater good.

 

RIP Thomas Sanakara, le revolutionair africaine

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Quett Ketumile Masire (born 1925) was a leading nationalist politician during Botswana's transition to independence. As the nation's first vice-president he played a key role in making his country a model of economic development in Africa. From 1980-1997 he served as Botswana's president.

Quett Masire was born on July 23, 1925, at Kanye, the capital of the Bangwaketse Reserve, Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana). Son of a minor headman, he grew up in a community where male commoners, such as himself, were expected to become low-paid migrant laborers in the mines of South Africa. From an early age Masire set himself apart through academic achievement. After graduating at the top of his class at the Kanye school, he received a scholarship to further his education at the Tiger Kloof Institute in South Africa. During school breaks he supported himself by selling refreshments at local football matches. Despite continued good grades, his ambition to attend university was frustrated by financial and health constraints.

 

In 1950, after graduating from Tiger Kloof, Masire helped found the Seepapitso II Secondary School, the first institution of higher learning in the Bangwaketse Reserve. He served as the school's headmaster for five years. During this period he clashed with Bathoen II, the autocratic Bangwaketse ruler. Resenting Bathoen's many petty interferences in school affairs, Masire, working through the revived Bechuanaland African Teachers Association, became an advocate for the autonomy of protectorate schools from chiefly authority.

 

In 1957 Masire earned a Master Farmers Certificate and established himself as one of the territory's leading agriculturalists. His success led to renewed conflict with the jealous Bathoen, who seized his farms as a penalty for the supposed infraction of fencing communal land. When Masire challenged this decision, the chief went further by threatening his banishment. By now the public, as well as leading members of the colonial administration, looked upon Masire as an articulate critic of the dominant role of chiefs over local politics.

 

In 1958 Masire was appointed as the protectorate reporter for the African Echo/Naledi ya Botswana newspaper. He was also elected to the newly reformed Bangwaketse Tribal Council and, after 1960, the protectorate-wide African and Legislative Councils. Although he attended the first Kanye meeting of the People's Party, the earliest nationalist grouping to enjoy a mass following in the territory, he declined to join the movement. Instead, in 1961 and 1962, he helped organize the rival Democratic Party, serving as its secretary-general.

 

From the beginning the Democratic Party was dominated by Seretse Khama, its popular leader, and Masire, its chief organizer. One of the principal reasons for the party's early electoral success was Masire's energy; in one two-week period in 1964, for example, while campaigning in remote areas of the Kalahari desert, he traveled across some 3,000 miles of sandy tracks to address 24 meetings. Besides spreading his party's message, he used such junkets to build up a strong network of local party organizers, many of whom were teachers and/or master farmers. He also was the editor of the party's newspaper, Therisanyo, which was the protectorate's first independent newspaper.

 

In 1965 the Democratic Party won 28 of the 31 contested seats in the new Legislative Assembly, giving it a clear mandate to lead Botswana to independence. The following year Masire became the new nation's vice-president, serving under Seretse. Until 1980 he also occupied the significant portfolios of finance (from 1966) and development planning (from 1967), which were formally merged in 1971.

 

As a principal architect of Botswana's steady economic and infastructural growth between 1966 and 1980, Masire earned a reputation as a highly competent technocrat. However, his local Bangwaketse political base was eroded by his old nemesis Bathoen. During the initial years of independence the Democratic Party government moved decisively to undercut many of the residual powers of the chiefs. As a result, in 1969 Bathoen abdicated, only to reemerge as the leader of the opposition National Front. This set the stage for Bathoen's local electoral victory over Masire during the same year. However, the ruling party won decisively at the national level, thus allowing Masire to maintain his position as one of the four "specially elected" members of Parliament.

 

With the death of Seretse in July of 1980, Masire became Botswana's second president. His leadership was subsequently confirmed by Democratic Party landslides in the 1984 and 1989 general elections. Under his leadership Botswana continued to enjoy its remarkable post-independence economic growth rate of some 10 percent per annum, one of the highest in the world. Most of this growth came from diamonds, the nation's leading export earner. Expanded revenues allowed Masire's administration to expand social services considerably, particularly in the areas of education, health, and communications. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Masire's leadership was the award he received in 1989 from the Hunger Project in recognition of the improvement in nutritional levels throughout the country between 1981 and 1988, despite the onset of severe drought.

 

Despite Botswana's enviable record of development during the decade of the 1980s, many problems remained. Although most citizens benefited from the nation's prosperity, the gap between the small but growing middle class and the much larger number of unemployed or underemployed poor posed a significant challenge. Throughout his career Masire sought to create jobs and wealth through the promotion of a strong private sector, but heretofore the economy has been dominated by a handful of capital-intensive parastatal companies.

 

Another continuing challenge was relations with South Africa. Botswana consistently championed the cause of majority rule there but, while granting asylum to refugees from apartheid, refused to allow its territory to be used as a base for guerrilla attacks against its powerful neighbor. Despite this stand, the 1980s witnessed an upsurge in South African acts of aggression against Botswana. Contacts between Afrikaners and anti-apartheid groups within the country in the early 1990s, however, underscored the potential of Masire's efforts to help mediate a negotiated end to white minority rule there.

 

Yet this was not the only problem he faced during the turbulent 1990s; he had his people's hunger, education and welfare problems. In 1996, the United States agreed to give $203 million in aid over three decades. In September, 1995 AID (Agency for International Development) had shuttered its bilateral mission in Botswana, asserting the nation had "graduated" from foreign assistance. According to Masire, it was a rite of passage the nation had been preparing for all along. "We used to say to our donors, 'Help us to help ourselves, and the more you help us, the sooner you will get rid of us,"' he recalled.

 

The U.S. funds paid for more than 300 business owners to bone up on finance, marketing and other subjects. For the smallest and neediest, AID helped set up the Women's Finance House, offering training, savings accounts and loans of up to $1,700 to poor female entrepreneurs. For an example, a seamstress turned to it when she received an order for 101 outfits for a large wedding. The fabric alone cost three times what she made in most months. With a $400 loan, however, she completed the order.

 

Masire was the 1989 Laureate of the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger, and was cited for his sustaining efforts to develop nutrition, health, education and housing.

[Carafaat]

Don't forget Senghor, Lumumba, Ñyerere(teacher). And aslo mention some leaders from Lusophone countries, don't narrow it down on francophone and aglophone leaders.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the 24th President of Liberia and the first elected female Head of State in Africa. Throughout her career she has demonstrated passionate commitment to hard work, integrity and good governance, advocating for the rights of women and the importance of education to provide a better future for her country and its people.

 

Born Ellen Euphemia Johnson in Monrovia on October 29, 1938, she is the granddaughter of a traditional chief of renown in western Liberia and a market woman from the southeast. She grew up in Liberia and attended high school at the College of West Africa in Monrovia, subsequently studying at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where she obtained a Master’s Degree in Public Administration in 1971.

 

Her entry into politics came in 1972 when she delivered her now famous commencement address to her high school alma mater in which she sharply criticized the government, showing her determination to speak truth unto power. This was the start of a distinguished professional and political career spanning nearly four decades.

 

In 1965 she joined the then Treasury Department in Liberia and was appointed Minister of Finance in 1979 where she introduced measures to curb the mismanagement of government finances. After the military coup d’état of 1980, Johnson Sirleaf served as President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI) but fled Liberia and the increasingly suppressive military government that same year. She traveled to Kenya and served as Vice President of CITICORP’s Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, and later moved to Washington, D.C. to assume the position of Senior Loan Officer at the World Bank, and Vice President for Equator Bank. In 1992 she joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.

 

However, with her country still very much at heart, Johnson Sirleaf resigned in 1997 to return home and contest the Presidential elections and was ranked second in votes to warlord Charles Taylor. She was exiled again, this time to the Ivory Coast where she kept a close eye on Liberian politics. During that time she established, in Abidjan, Kormah Development and Investment Corporation, a venture capital vehicle for African entrepreneurs, and Measuagoon, a Liberian community development NGO.

 

In 2003 when Charles Taylor was exiled to Nigeria and the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) was formed, Johnson Sirleaf was selected to serve as Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission where she led the country’s anti-corruption reform by changing the reporting mechanism of the General Auditing Commission from the Executive to the Legislature thereby strengthening and reinforcing its independence. She resigned this position to successfully contest the 2005 Presidential elections, resulting in her historic inauguration, on January 16, 2006, as President of Liberia.

 

After decades of fighting for freedom, justice and equality in Liberia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has spent more than four years rebuilding post-conflict Liberia. She has revived national hope by strengthening the institutions of national security and good governance, leading the revitalization of the national economy and infrastructure, including the construction of more than 800 miles of roads, and restoring Liberia’s international reputation and credibility.

 

President Johnson Sirleaf has built strong relations with regional partners and the international community, attracting investment of over $16 billion in Liberia’s mining, agriculture and forestry sectors, and off-shore oil exploration to provide jobs for her people. Her leadership has led to more than $4 billion in debt relief in June 2010 and to the lifting of UN trade sanctions to allow Liberia access to the international market. She has increased the national budget from $80 million in 2006 to more than $350 million in 2010 and has driven annual GDP growth at between 5 and 9.5 percent over this period.

 

The Liberian leader has attracted more than $5 million of private resources from international contributions, which she has used to enhance Government’s ability to rebuild vital infrastructure – to build schools and clinics and markets, and to foster scholarships to further build the skills and capabilities of the Liberian people.

 

President Johnson Sirleaf currently serves as Chairperson of the Mano River Union where she leads the effort for political stability and economic cooperation among Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. She was a founding member of the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership, was designated in 1999 by the OAU to serve on the committee to investigate the Rwanda genocide, was a Commission Chair for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, and was selected by UNIFEM as one of two persons to investigate and report on the effect of conflict on women and women’s roles in peace building.

 

Before her ascendancy to the Presidency, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf served on many advisory boards, including the International Crisis Group (USA) and Women Waging Peace (USA), and she is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, among them: the FAO CERES Medal (2008); the Crisis Group Fred Cuny Award for the Prevention of Deadly Crisis (2008) for outstanding leadership in democracy, development and peace building in Africa; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007), the highest civilian honor bestowed by an American president. Special honors received include Commander de l’Ordre du Mono (1996), Togo’s highest national honor; the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom of Speech Award (1988); and the 2010 Friend of the Media Award from the African Editors’ Union, in recognition of her contribution to a media-friendly environment in Liberia throughout her tenure as President. She has also received Honorary Doctorate degrees from fourteen universities in the United States and Africa.

 

In 2010, Newsweek magazine listed Johnson Sirleaf as one of the ten best leaders in the world, Time placed her among the top ten female leaders, and The Economist called her "the best President the country has ever had."

 

President Johnson Sirleaf has written widely on financial, development and human rights issues, and in 2008 she published her critically acclaimed memoir, “This Child Will Be Great”.

 

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the proud mother of four sons and grandmother of eleven.

[BOB]

Coconut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace, Love & Unity.

[Nin-Yaaban]

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[Nin-Yaaban]

How could you forget "Libaaxa Afrika"

 

 

Idi Amin Dada (c. 1925 – August 16, 2003) was a military leader and the third President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military coup of January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. He later promoted himself to Field Marshal while he was the head of state.

Amin's rule was characterized by gross human rights abuse, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000[1] to 500,000. During his years in power, Amin shifted in allegiance from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable Israeli support to being backed by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, the Soviet Union and East Germany.[2][3][4]

In 1975–1976, Amin became the Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, a pan-Africanist group designed to promote solidarity of the African states.[5] During the 1977–1979 period, Uganda was appointed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.[6] In 1977, after the last two British diplomats withdrew from Uganda, Amin declared he had beaten the British and added "CBE", for "Conqueror of the British Empire", to his title. Radio Uganda then announced his entire title: "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE".[7]

Dissent within Uganda and Amin's attempt to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania in 1978 led to the Uganda–Tanzania War and the demise of his regime. Amin later fled to exile in Libya and Saudi Arabia until his death on 16 August 2003.

[Che -Guevara]

Cautionary Tale

[Archdemos]

 

Julius Nyerere (Mwalimu) 13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999

 

BBC Obituary

 

World: Africa

 

Julius Nyerere: The conscience of Africa

 

Dr Julius Nyerere, who has died aged 77, led the former British protectorate of Tanganyika to independence in 1961, becoming its first prime Minister and later its first president.

 

His country was withdrawn from British rule without violence and with comparatively little racial bitterness. Dr Nyerere acquired in the process the reputation of being a moderate, an idea that was encouraged by his personal modesty and his preference for Western values.

 

In both Africa and the West his prestige, when he first became President, stood high. It was seriously shaken, however, early in 1964, by a mutiny of the Tanganyikan Army that spread to other parts of East Africa and was only put down with British help.

 

Later, as President of Tanzania, formed by the joining of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Nyerere instituted a one-party system, together with other forms of government that smacked of a police state.

 

Yet he always defended his position declaring that Tanzanians had far more freedom under his rule than they had ever had under the British, and that the one-party system was vital for stability.

 

Over the years, he became increasingly anti-British and anti-European, and entered into close relations with Beijing. He accepted large numbers of Chinese military instructors and technicians, a development that angered the United States, which cut off aid.

 

President Nyerere was outspoken in his criticism of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government for not taking military action against the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia when it issued its unilateral declaration of independence in 1965.

 

 

[ image: Nyerere urged Harold Wilson to send troops into Rhodesia]

Nyerere urged Harold Wilson to send troops into Rhodesia

In common with other African leaders, he was greatly concerned about the possibility of the UK resuming limited arms sales to South Africa. Nevertheless, by November 1975 he came to London and was accorded the full honours of a state visit.

 

He was then the longest serving head of a Commonwealth African state, and the UK government regarded him as a major stabilising force in an increasingly turbulent region.

 

As the crisis over Rhodesia worsened in the late 1970s, President Nyerere played a campaigning role in moves by the so-called frontline states - Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola - to hasten majority rule.

 

He also came to have an important influence with the nationalist guerrilla groups in what was to become Zimbabwe, and was a key figure in the formulation of the peace plan that was concluded at the Lancaster House conference in London in 1979.

 

It was in that year that Tanzanian forces invaded Uganda forcing an end to the murderous regime of Idi Amin.

 

In Tanzania itself, President Nyerere attempted to achieve his goal of a socialist and self-supporting state. In 1967 this policy of self-reliance had been enshrined in the Arusha Declaration (named after the northern Tanzanian town where it was announced). It came to be regarded as one of the most important political documents to have emerged in the developing world.

Yet his policy of "ujama", community-based farming collectives, proved disastrous. The idealism of the grand project was overwhelmed by the lack of individual incentive.

 

Ten years later, taking stock, President Nyerere issued a remarkably honest booklet which gave as much prominence to the failures as well as the successes.

 

"There is a time for planting and a time for harvesting", he wrote.

 

"For us it is still a time for planting".

 

It was his abject failure at home that will blight the reputation of a man who had gained respect as one of the few African leaders of his time who stood for idealism and principle.

[Cambuulo iyo bun]

Guulwade Siyaad aawey neh

[Carafaat]

Thanks Archdemos, Nyere is a true example of a leader to build a culture and compromise.

[Somalia]

But how does Puntland promote piracy, not benefit, but promote? Care to explain that one Carafaat?

[Archdemos]

Carafaat;793642 wrote:

Thanks Archdemos, Nyere is a true example of a leader to build a culture and compromise.

Indeed! My claim to fame is I've had the privilege of meeting him and Mwinyi in my childhood

[Mukulaalow]

 

The weidest African President.

 

 

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