By Ing. Professor Douglas Boateng
Chartered Director (UK) • Chartered Engineer (UK) • Fellow, Institute of Directors UK • Fellow, Ghana Institution of Engineering
Let us approach this conversation with honesty and humility.
What is wrong with us is not a shortage of intelligence, ideas, or ambition.
What is wrong with us is not leadership alone.
What is wrong with us lies deeper in behaviour, in habit, and in how we collectively relate to responsibility, accountability, and follow-through.
Across Africa, governments change, constitutions evolve, party slogans rotate, and political faces come and go. Yet outcomes often remain stubbornly familiar. Roads deteriorate long before their expected lifespan. Public hospitals struggle to meet demand. Youth unemployment persists despite repeated policy announcements. Corruption adapts rather than disappears; it simply changes language, methods, and beneficiaries.
If different leaders, operating under different systems and eras, repeatedly deliver similar outcomes, then leadership alone cannot be the full explanation. At some point, a serious society must look inward, not to assign blame, but to identify responsibility.
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NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): When the journey keeps ending at the same destination, it is worth re-examining how we travel.
What is wrong with us, plainly stated
What is wrong with us is not that Africans complain. Many complaints are legitimate, necessary, and long overdue. What is wrong with us is that complaint too rarely matures into completion.
We speak eloquently about what is broken. We analyse problems with remarkable clarity. Public discourse across the continent is vibrant, passionate, and informed. Radio talk shows, academic forums, community meetings, and digital platforms reflect deep awareness of governance failures and institutional weaknesses.
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Yet the discipline required to pursue issues to closure is often missing.
We raise concerns publicly, then disengage privately.
We mobilise emotionally, then move on institutionally.
The gap between expression and execution is where progress quietly stalls. It is also where accountability loses momentum.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): A concern voiced without follow-through comforts the speaker more than it changes the system.
We tend to prioritise emotion over process
Africans are deeply engaged citizens. Political awareness is widespread and often sophisticated. From markets to lecture halls, from transport hubs to places of worship, governance failures are dissected with impressive insight and candour.
Yet when solutions demand structured processes, documentation, formal escalation, committee engagement, legal recourse, or sustained monitoring, momentum often fades. Institutions respond to procedure, not passion. Where process literacy is weak, accountability struggles to take root.
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In many developed democracies, citizens are trained formally and informally to navigate systems persistently. They understand how to file complaints, escalate cases, demand timelines, and insist on responses. In much of Africa, process is still seen as distant, complex, or reserved for elites, even though it remains the primary language institutions understand.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Emotion raises awareness; process delivers outcomes.
We often balance respect for authority with too little scrutiny
Respect for authority is deeply embedded in many African cultures. Titles, office, and protocol command deference. While respect is valuable, it can quietly discourage scrutiny when left unchecked.
As a result, concerns are frequently discussed in informal, low-risk spaces such as family settings, social gatherings, churches, mosques, funerals, or private digital forums rather than pursued consistently through formal accountability channels.
In societies where accountability functions well, questioning authority is normalised and expected. Where questioning power is perceived as disrespect or insubordination, governance systems lose a critical corrective mechanism.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Authority grows healthier when it is questioned with purpose, not avoided out of fear.
We sometimes equate elections with the full measure of citizenship
Elections across Africa often attract strong participation and emotional investment. They matter deeply, and rightly so. However, democracy does not end at the ballot box.
Effective governance depends on what happens between elections: budget oversight, project monitoring, procurement scrutiny, service-delivery tracking, and sustained civic engagement. Where elections are treated as the final act of citizenship rather than the beginning of supervision, accountability weakens.
In more established democracies, elections trigger continuous scrutiny through parliamentary committees, investigative journalism, citizen petitions, and civil litigation. In many African contexts, elections still bring a pause in civic engagement rather than a renewal of it.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Voting chooses leaders; consistent oversight shapes outcomes.
We expect strong states while contributing weakly to state capacity
There is an uncomfortable but necessary conversation about shared responsibility. Citizens rightly demand quality public services, yet compliance with civic obligations, taxation, protection of public assets, regulatory adherence, and lawful reporting, remains uneven.
Sub-Saharan Africa continues to record relatively low tax-to-GDP ratios compared with OECD economies, limiting fiscal space for infrastructure, health, education, and enforcement. Weak revenue mobilisation and weak accountability reinforce one another, trapping states in cycles of underperformance and mistrust.
This dynamic is not merely a policy failure. It reflects the maturity of the social contract.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): A system cannot consistently deliver what it is persistently denied.
We struggle with consistency when accountability becomes personal
Balancing communal loyalty with ethical consistency remains one of Africa’s most sensitive challenges. Ethnicity, political affiliation, faith, or familiarity can soften responses to wrongdoing when it involves “one of our own.”
Societies that have successfully reduced corruption did so not only through laws and institutions, but through a collective refusal to excuse misconduct based on proximity or identity. Where moral standards are applied selectively, accountability weakens, and public trust erodes.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Integrity weakens when principles bend to familiarity.
We often confuse visibility with effectiveness
Digital platforms have amplified citizen voices across Africa, expanding awareness and participation. This is progress, but visibility alone does not equal impact.
Hashtags, viral videos, and trending conversations raise attention, but institutional reform requires sustained engagement: petitions, court actions, legislative pressure, audits, and follow-up. When online activism is not connected to formal accountability mechanisms, momentum dissipates.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Attention creates pressure only when it is sustained beyond the screen.
Why old explanations are no longer sufficient
Other societies did not become functional because their citizens were inherently superior. They became functional because systems were designed to reward persistence and discourage disengagement.
Citizen-petition frameworks, digital governance platforms, and participatory budgeting mechanisms in parts of Europe, East Asia, and Latin America reduced friction and made follow-through unavoidable.
Africa often celebrates participation symbolically, but weakens it structurally through dialogue without closure, consultation without consequence, and accountability without enforcement.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Governance improves where persistence is designed into the system.
Why change can no longer be postponed
Africa’s demographic trajectory raises the stakes. By mid-century, the continent will account for more than a quarter of the world’s population. Youthful demographics, rapid urbanisation, and rising expectations place increasing pressure on already strained systems.
In such a context, a culture of concern without closure is not sustainable.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Demography rewards preparation and punishes delay.
What must change, calmly but deliberately
If what is wrong with us is behavioural, then the response must also be behavioural.
We must strengthen the journey from concern to case-building.
From expression to escalation.
From symbolic participation to sustained oversight.
From selective accountability to consistent standards.
From civic awareness to civic literacy.
From digital engagement to institutional follow-through.
NyansaKasa (Words of Wisdom): Democracy matures when citizens learn not only to speak, but to stay.
What is wrong with us and why we keep sustaining it
Africa is not short of ideas.
Africa is not short of talent.
Africa is not short of laws or visions.
Progress stalls when societies disengage too early. Leadership matters, but leadership is shaped by what citizens tolerate, excuse, normalise, or consistently challenge. Where follow-through fades, systems revert.
The Africa we desire will not emerge from complaint alone. It will not emerge from elections alone. It will emerge when citizens accept a deeply inconvenient truth: citizenship is ongoing work.
Work that is repetitive.
Work that is unglamorous.
Work that demands persistence long after emotion fades.
Until then, what is wrong with us will remain familiar, openly discussed, widely acknowledged, and quietly sustained. And perhaps the most hopeful truth of all is this: what is learned can be unlearned, and what is practised can be practised differently.
