We must be ruthless in our pursuit of excellence
If 20 years ago, someone had said the top coaches in the English Premier league would be three Germans ( Man United — Ralf Rangnick, Liverpool — Jurgen Klopp, Chelsea — Thomas Tuchel), two Spaniards (Man City — Pep Guardiola, Arsenal — Mikel Arteta) and an Italian (Tottenham — Antonio Conte), they would have been laughed away derisively. There is an impressive line of British managers like Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Alf Ramsay, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley, George Graham, Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson. British coaches were the gold standard of football leadership. The inspirational Sir Matt Busby — that Churchillian voice — rose from the ashes of the Munich Disaster to conquer Europe. Sir Alf Ramsay gloriously led England to world cup glory in 1966. Bill Shankly, is the man who famously said football is a lot more serious than life and death. And yet try as they could, British Football has failed miserably at international level over the last 50 years. They have had to watch the Germans, Spaniards, Italians and even Portuguese take turns to win the World and European Cups while they wallowed in mediocrity. Spain played perfect team football to win the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. The German machine humiliated Brazil 7-1 in their own backyard in the 2014 World Cup. The French dazzled in 2018. All Britain could look up to was a Paul Gascoigne inspired semi-final appearance in 1990. Today, with their foreign coaches, English teams are once again dominating Europe. England even miraculously reached the finals of the European Cup and the semi-finals of the World Cup in Russia, something that has not happened for over 50 years.
We in Africa can learn from English football. It takes skills to be world class, and it does not matter where that skill comes from. The key is always to identify the problem, and deploy the right leadership to deal with the problem.
Africa is sinking deeper into poverty. We still haven't found a way of unlocking the potential of our people. We are the victims of a ruthless resource curse which is relentlessly grinding us deeper and deeper into a poverty trap. We need world class skills to decisively tackle the scourge of African poverty. We need skills that will help us to discover a way to unlock the biggest resource at our disposal — our people! We need the skill that will help us to start seeing our people as a resource.
It cannot be business as usual when poverty is gnawing at the fabric of our society. Everything turns on leadership. Let's rise to the challenge of our times.