Education is the womb of the national mind. Leadership is the compass that orients the national mind toward an ever-higher goal of further development.
Education here does not necessarily mean contemporary schools, but institutions and systems that consolidates, organizes, and generationally transfers indigenous knowledge, continues building on it, and enlightens about cultural identity. And leadership here can only occur within the framework of this indigenous knowledge and identity, and thereby steadily progresses it.
If you picture a chain or an ouroboros, then the beginning and the end (thus the first and last link that unites and completes the circle of continuity), is leadership and education.
If you wish to liberate and rapidly advance a people, these are the two areas to target, for they are the primary pillars upon which societies are based and develop. Everything else is details.
Historically when foreigners wish to subjugate a people, what they could not directly achieve through the military they achieved indirectly through education that infiltrated cultural knowledge, and also by toppling or controlling leadership. It is always the same pattern.
When a people are weak in these areas, no matter how much effort they expend elsewhere, they are lost.
If you examine Africa today on these two pillars of leadership and education, a desolate picture presents itself. Since initial independence of many African countries (1) real leadership has been lacking after the demise of the early forefathers, and (2) the inherited education institutions were not indigenously adapted to the people, but just adopted and maintained. And many of these institutions have even retrogressed. African leaders have so little faith in the education systems they supervise that they send their children to foreign schools. What now?
The foundation for the right type of education in Africa needs to be laid anew. From the ground up.
Builders of the African future should first focus their energy on these two primary areas in order to achieve comprehensive and enduring results. All other sectors are consolidated within education, and the crowning of the right education for a society is the right leadership who leads onwards. Leadership here is meant not just in a person, but the pipeline and mentorship system that keeps the link in one generation fastened to the next, so the whole national chain of continuous leadership remains taut into the future.
If you cannot lead and educate your people the right way, all other efforts are in vain or at best will be limited in scope.
To build a brighter African future, the first step is leadership and education. Those who carry the natural gift of education should unite, as well as those endowed in the natural sense of leadership who are committed to service. Through working together, we will create a brighter African present and future of which we will be proud.
~Dr. Ikenna A. Ezealah, Ph.D., MBA
Builder of the African Future
Nation Upbuilding 