Leadership is a very precise balancing act. American statesman Teddy Roosevelt is said to have once argued, “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” 



This is one aspect of the balancing act I refer to. The other aspect is the very art of navigating the various moving parts leadership entails. Maneuvering these parts requires leaders to demonstrate skill, intuition, discernment, and perseverance. 



There thus needs to be a framework to guide leadership practices. In the South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, Lämsä and Keränen refer to responsible leadership. 



As they argue, “The principles of responsible leadership are organized in a hierarchical order, based on the level of cooperation between manager and employee.” In an analysis of leadership styles, their study found that responsible leadership was dependent on the presence of various principles, including care, trust, openness, fairness, and empowerment. 



This, they argue, is based on ethical frameworks from both parties. As I went through this study, I contemplated the implications of managing employment relations. This could be considered a ubuntu style of leadership that has its roots in various African societies and cultures. 



In Understanding Organizational Leadership Through Ubuntu, Chiku Malunga argues that ubuntu calls for leaders to determine the way for others based on African values such as honesty, sincerity, dignity, and respect for others. 



This goes beyond the traditional hierarchical notions of leadership and focuses on building strong relationships, fostering social cohesion, creating a purpose, and encouraging environments that promote collective wellbeing. In Ubuntu Leadership – An Explication of an Afrocentric Leadership Style, Eugene Laloo argues that there now needs to be a view to encompass traditionally African leadership theories such as ubuntu. 



As he asserts, “Now is the time to refocus on its further development and refi nement to bring this leadership theory into the fold of general leadership discourse.” It could be argued that mutual respect, a central tenet of ubuntu, is the lens through which discipline, confl ict and harmony in the workplace should be analyzed.



Discipline within the context of employment relations can be viewed in two ways. Firstly, it entails a framework of expectations for employees to follow. Strong leaders are made acutely aware of their roles and responsibilities but also the consequences of not meeting these expectations. What is required is a framework for accountability, which outlines how leaders respond to issues such as performance or conduct. Secondly, it denotes one’s own sense of control – or controlled motivation as some camps refer to it as. 



This is based on values such as respect and humility. Leaders who encourage this sense of discipline are likely to have more engaged and empowered employees.Confl ict resolution is a crucial component of leadership, and leaders must be skilled at addressing confl ict not only promptly but also in a constructive manner. 



Conflict resolution relies on open communication. It is thus imperative for employees to create channels for employees to effectively communicate their grievances and for employees to act as mediators where necessary to fi nd mutually beneficial solutions. 



Leaders must have soft skills such as active listening, clear and effective communication, and empathy in their arsenal. This enables a more conducive and positive environment. Disagreements should thus not be viewed negatively but rather through the lens of opportunity for growth.These ideas strive towards achieving harmony in the workplace. 



Harmony is predicated on the very culture of respect. Here, leaders must demonstrate respect through their actions by emphasizing traits such as fairness or empathy. This fosters a sense of belonging. This inspires cooperation and teamwork and instils a sense of belonging and respect for one another. Additionally, the very idea of harmony acknowledges and celebrates differences. The mutual respect that emerges is ubuntu in practice – as the idea insists, ‘I am because you are’. 



In ubuntu-style leadership, these principles are encouraged and deeply ingrained in cultural norms and traditions. According to writer Sammi Caramela, this approach to employee engagement is integral for productivity, creativity, and innovation. 



Strong manager-employee relations have the potential to decrease employee absenteeism and turnover rates, while poor management can have devastating effects. In fact, this is backed up by a GoodHire survey of 3,000 workers, which indicated that 82% of respondents would leave if they had a bad manager. Indeed, leadership is a very precise balancing act – one enriched by the very idea of ubuntu.

Three creative colleagues exchanging ideas

Expert-Speak: Leadership As A Balancing Act Between Ubuntu Principles And Effective Management

At Mable Busagwa’s store in the central Ugandan district of Wakiso, the six kids playing on the verandah give the impression it’s a daycare center, but the branded merchandise on the cabinets quickly betrays that. Busagwa, 52, has run the store, where she also lives, for two decades, often helping take care of her neighbors’ kids as the mothers go off to work in the capital, Kampala.
A grandmother of one, Busagwa holds no insurance policy – be it for fire, accident, property or health – despite being diabetic. When she falls ill, Busagwa can count on her neighbors for nursing and her adult children to pay medical bills. If a fire destroyed her store, material and financial support would pour in from the community members, helping her rebuild.
This age-old reliance on family and community has served as an informal type of insurance for a majority of Africans on a continent where insurance penetration in most countries accounts for less than 1% of GDP.
But for Corneille Karekezi, Chief Executive Officer of Africa Re (African Reinsurance Corporation), one of the largest reinsurers in Africa and the Middle East, it’s time the continent put an end to the system commonly known as Ubuntu.
“My vision for the insurance industry on the continent is a vision where every African citizen will know that there is a mechanism of risk sharing, of solidarity which can improve his/her life,” says Karekezi at an industry conference in Kampala in May. “We cannot count eternally on our traditional structures of solidarity which are under immense transformation because of the social, economic and demographic transformation of our continent.”
“In our culture, we have developed self-insurance and community resilience based on families, communities, villages. Because of the good culture of African countries of helping each other in families, expanded families, communities, villages, that is an informal way of insurance,” he says.
“Now we are talking about a formal way of insurance where any African citizen will pay premium to an insurance company which will be ready to assist him in case of a claim or accident or loss. We have to create that trust, that education.”
<div id="attachment_33501" style="width: 511px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33501" class=" wp-image-33501" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Corneille-Karekezi-e1505719882877-300x199.jpeg" alt="" width="501" height="332" />Corneille Karekezi (Photo by Joseph Burite)</div>
Karekezi, a Rwandan who boasts 25 years’ experience in the insurance industry, has served as Africa Re’s CEO since 2011, rising from Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Managing Director. He previously served as the Managing Director at Sonarwa S.A. and has been a Director at Shelter Afrique. Karekezi also served as a Governor of the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank.
Africa Re, established in 1976, is owned by 41 African Union member countries which control 33.59%. The African Development Bank has an 8.17% shareholding and 111 African insurance and reinsurance companies hold 32.85%. Canada’s Fairfax Financial, France’s AXA and Proparco, as well as IRB Brasil RE of Brazil, control a combined shareholding of 25.39%. The reinsurer has opened a seventh office in Kampala, Uganda, to tap opportunities emerging from the East African nation’s oil and gas sector, says Karekezi.
Africa Re accounts for one third of Africa’s reinsurance market capacity as measured by shareholder funds, which is an estimated $2.9 billion, including South African reinsurers. The continent has 47 reinsurance companies that write only 35% of African reinsurance premium income, according to Karekezi.
Africa Re estimates the reinsurance market of Africa in 2015 fell by 12.5% in US dollars but grew by more than 15% in local currencies. It likely “contracted further in USD terms because of the massive depreciation in Sudan, Egypt and Nigeria.”
“The currency in Nigeria is really under pressure and that has impacted the topline in USD. For Africa Re, the decline in USD has been 5% but this is really a matter of conversion and reporting, but underlying business has been growing by almost 11% in different currencies,” says Karekezi.
“Insurance uptake is still very low in Africa due to the high poverty rate and lack of capital and expertise within insurance companies,” reads a report by the African Insurance Organisation. But “shifting demographics, changing cultural norms, an increasing urbanization as well as declining influence of extended family as a source of informal insurance are likely to accelerate insurance sales further,” the report, known as the Africa Insurance Barometer, says.
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While Karekezi sees a need for consolidation, African insurance companies will need help.
“More cooperation, more integration of markets and more importantly, enough capital in the insurance and reinsurance industry will be the major factor if we want Africa to retain more risks and premium income,” he says.
“Today, 65% of reinsurance premiums generated on the continent are leaving the continent because of a lack of financial capacity.”
South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized country, accounts for 72%, or $46 billion, of Africa’s insurance premiums. The other major markets are Morocco, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria, according to the insurance barometer report. Life, motor and engineering are the fastest growing lines of insurance business, the report shows, while the fastest growing distribution channels are bancassurance and mobile phones.
“We know that in our dignity as Africans, when we had elders among us we used to accommodate them and stay with them in villages but now families are scattered with children going to study and work across the cities and countries… a child will be sending money via mobile phone to his father to help him buy this and that, to buy medicine for his cow. Very soon, the means of payment will be electronic, even in the villages, it’s coming with mobile money and other systems of payment,” says Karekezi.
“All those things cannot be managed as we used to manage them in the past. The sooner we increase the education of insurance, the better we will manage our various challenges in terms of risk management in our lives, families, communities and even state,” he says.
“If we don’t do that, we will have tremendous challenges and problems.” &#8211; Written by Joseph Burite

Should Africa Ditch Ubuntu?

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu—this age-old Zulu proverb explains the spirit of ubuntu; translated it reads “A person is a person through others” but many paraphrase it to “I am because we are”.
You’ll find Ubuntu in any close-knit community where neighbors help each other with anything from sharing sugar and bread to babysitting and mourning. Ubuntu in business is called philanthropy. The Latin origins of the word means the love of humankind; the desire to promote the welfare of others, mostly, through the generous donation of money to good causes.
In a historic press event in a plush Sandton hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa’s richest black man, Patrice Motsepe announced that he and his wife, Precious, would donate half of their family fortune to philanthropic causes during their lifetime and beyond.
The room was full, from clergymen and traditional leaders to South African businesses’ top brass as well as ministers and union leaders. Among them were Pamodzi CEO, Ndaba Ntsele; Jessica Motaung, daughter of Kaizer Chiefs FC owner Kaizer Motaung; chairman of Shell SA, Bonang Mohale; Zulu nation Monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini; basic education minister, Angie Motshekga and Archbishop Tutu’s daughters to name a few.
<div id="attachment_7" style="width: 209px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-7" class="size-medium wp-image-7" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/280-261_1-199x300.jpg" alt="" width="199" height="300" />Patrice Motsepe, Johannesburg; 19 August 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff</div>
“We want to build a track record where ordinary South Africans feel we’re making a humble contribution,” says the 8th richest African.
He assured the audience that he would make sure his children continued the tradition.
The move put the Motsepes on a list of elites who have pledged to give a majority of their wealth to philanthropy. They are the first Africans to join the Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010. Today, it has nearly 100 members including New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg; world-famous designer, Diane von Furstenberg; Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg and PayPal co-founder, Elon Musk.
Is this pledge a new trend in business or just an age-old tradition of ubuntu under a new light?
This is not the Motsepes’ first contribution, in 1999 they started the Motsepe Foundation, which to date has donated around R40-R50 million ($4.5-5.6 million) to business development. Last year alone they gave R20 million ($2.3 million) to major churches in South Africa. They say this move is just an acceleration of what they’ve established.
While the Motsepes have had a lucky turn of fortune, it wasn’t always that way.
“There were times when we had nothing… When I came back from America we had so many loans that we couldn’t pay our children’s school fees [and] we had to send them to good schools. But there was always belief because we come from parents who succeeded during the years when there was no black economic empowerment,” says Motsepe.
But many ask themselves whether other African entrepreneurs and companies will follow in Motsepe’s footsteps.
Philip Fauré, head of Citadel Philanthropy Advisors, says there are many wealthy entrepreneurs who are philanthropists but prefer to remain under the radar.
“Africans are more private than Americans,” says Fauré.
He also says that they avoid requests for money and security risks by doing things privately. However, he is quick to emphasize the difference between philanthropy and charity by using a fishing analogy—philanthropy is teaching one how to fish.
“Charity is never going to go away; aid is not the solution,” says Fauré.
He also says that philanthropy is a major industry worldwide, mostly in the States. He hopes that more prominent South African families will give publically.
There are a number of other African billionaires who are active philanthropists.
In 2012 alone, Johann Rupert, the third richest African and CEO of luxury goods group Richemont, gave his R3.6 million ($406,700) annual salary to charity. The Oppenheimers—the second richest family in Africa—donated R1 billion ($112.9 million) to support education in South Africa. In Nigeria, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, gave away around $35 million and Zenith Bank founder, Jim Ovia, gave away an estimated $6.6 million. And Zimbabwe’s richest man, Strive Masiyiwa, gave away around $6.4 million.
According to wealth management company Galileo Capital, if Motsepe plans to give away half of his wealth—bearing in mind his current net worth of $2.65 billion, interest and inflation—he will give away around $40 million annually to his philanthropic missions.

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Expert-Speak: Leadership As A Balancing Act Between Ubuntu Principles And Effective Management

Should Africa Ditch Ubuntu?

To Earn Is Human; To Give Divine