African leaders urged to put leadership at heart of public sector reforms

By Geoffrey Buta
African governments have been urged to place leadership development at the centre of public sector reforms to ensure successful implementation of their policies.

Speaking at the during a virtual webinar organised by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) on September 3, 2026, Executive Secretary of ACBF, Mr. Mamadou Bitey said it was important for the leaders to appreciate the fact that technical expertise alone could not guarantee the successful implementation of policies and institutional reforms.

The event was under the theme “Leading Public Sector Transformation in Africa: Leadership Lessons from the LEAPS Program.”
 it also marked the launch of the LEAPS Change Story publication, which documents leadership journeys and institutional outcomes from participants of the programme. 

Mr Biteye, said public sector reform was rarely constrained by a shortage of good ideas, but rather by the ability of leaders to bring people together, build trust, overcome resistance and sustain momentum.

He said governments across Africa were undertaking ambitious public financial management reforms aimed at mobilising domestic resources, improving public investment, strengthening budgeting and enhancing expenditure management.
However, progress remained uneven because leadership, alongside coordination and implementation, continued to be one of Africa’s major capacity challenges. 

Mr. Biteye said that was the reason ACBF, with support from the Gates Foundation, established the Leadership Excellence in Africa’s Public Sector (LEAPS) programme under the Enhancing Leadership and Governance in Public Financial Management in Africa initiative.

“Technical expertise is necessary, but it is not sufficient to deliver complex institutional reforms,” he said, stressing the need for reform leaders to inspire people, manage competing interests, navigate resistance and sustain momentum.
According to him, LEAPS goes beyond conventional classroom training by combining structured leadership learning, self-assessment, personal development plans, individual and group coaching, peer learning, technical seminars and practical application to real public financial management challenges. 

The programme, which has reached public sector professionals across several African countries, has also produced evidence of institutional change in Ghana.

Mr Biteye said coaching under LEAPS had helped strengthen accountability, goal setting and collaboration between finance and audit institutions in Ghana.

Similar outcomes had been recorded elsewhere, including stronger delegation and participatory management in Senegal, improved stakeholder alignment in Kenya and greater use of reflective and empathetic leadership practices in Zimbabwe. 

He said the evidence demonstrated that leadership development should not be regarded simply as an investment in individuals.
“Graduation from LEAPS should not be the endpoint,” he said, arguing that graduates should become mentors, reform champions and catalysts for wider institutional change.

He further called for leadership development to become embedded in public institutions through talent development, performance management, coaching and mentorship.
‘People lead reforms’

Also speaking at the webinar, Mr. Adil Ababou, Senior Programme Officer in Development Policy and Finance at the Gates Foundation, said the experience of LEAPS had reinforced three important lessons.
The first, he said, was that institutions and systems do not reform themselves—people lead reforms.
According to him, many of the difficult challenges facing public finance officials were not purely technical, but involved building consensus, managing resistance, working across institutional boundaries and maintaining momentum when political or economic circumstances changed. 

Mr. Ababou said LEAPS was deliberately designed around ownership, allowing participating institutions to identify their own capacity needs and define the problems and objectives they wanted to address, while receiving sustained coaching.
He said this approach was particularly important as African countries increasingly placed emphasis on sovereignty, policy ownership and defining their own development priorities. 

The third lesson, he said, was that leadership could not remain an individual capability.
“Successful reform requires teams, institutions and networks of officials who are able to work across the administrative silos that often characterise government,” he said.

He noted that the first cohort was already demonstrating greater delegation, improved communication, more participatory management, stronger cross-institutional collaboration and more deliberate listening and empathy. 

The ACBF media kit indicates that LEAPS is a six-month executive leadership development programme designed and delivered through the Ubora Academy, combining online learning with facilitated sessions, executive coaching, group mentoring, technical seminars and peer exchange.
Since its launch in 2024, the programme has enrolled more than 295 participants across eight African countries, building a continental community of public sector leaders applying leadership principles to institutional performance, public financial management and reform implementation. 

The programme focuses on five key areas: African leadership paradigms; self-awareness and emotional intelligence; high-performing and inclusive teams; strategic organisational change; and stakeholder engagement and systemic transformation. 
The newly launched LEAPS Change Story captures these experiences beyond conventional activity reporting, documenting what changed for individual leaders, how their institutions responded and what the evidence suggests about leadership development as a driver of public sector reform. 

A major message emerging from the webinar was the need for leadership development frameworks that reflect Africa’s own institutional realities.

ACBF said LEAPS was deliberately designed around African case studies, leadership paradigms and facilitators with direct experience of the continent’s public sector environments, rather than simply importing external leadership models. 
Mr Biteye said ACBF was committed, through LEAPS and the Ubora Academy, to building a pipeline of African public sector leaders who were technically competent, ethically grounded, collaborative and capable of leading change in complex environments.

He said the ultimate test of leadership development was its ability to translate policies, strategies and technical reforms into sustainable results.

“Systems do not reform themselves; budgets do not implement themselves; digital platforms do not transform institutions by themselves; and policies do not deliver results by themselves. People do,” Mr. Biteye said. 

The ACBF is now expanding the initiative through the LEAPS Executive Leadership Programme, opening the opportunity to public sector professionals and regional bodies across Africa. The programme is intended to provide a continent-focused executive leadership pathway combining learning, coaching, mentoring, technical seminars and practical application. 

Mr. Ababou, meanwhile, said the next challenge was to ensure that the gains made by individual participants were embedded within teams and institutions.

“If we want sustained improvements in public financial management, we have to invest not only in systems and technical skills, but also in the people who will lead those systems through change,” he said

By Geoffrey Buta