ACBF and Gates Foundation urge African governments to invest in public-sector leadership

Technical expertise, sound policies and strong institutions cannot deliver lasting reform on their own, the African Capacity Building Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said at a webinar in Abuja.

The event examined leadership lessons from the Leadership Excellence for Africa’s Public Sector, or LEAPS, programme. Participants focused on how stronger leadership could help governments overcome resistance, improve public financial management and turn reform plans into measurable institutional results.

ACBF Executive Secretary Mamadou Biteye said public-sector reform was rarely held back by a lack of good ideas. More often, he said, the challenge lay in leading change, building trust, bringing stakeholders together, overcoming resistance and maintaining momentum.

African governments are pursuing public-finance reforms to mobilize domestic resources, improve public investment, strengthen budgeting and manage expenditure more effectively. Biteye said progress remained uneven, with leadership, coordination and implementation still among the continent’s main capacity challenges. Those concerns led to the creation of LEAPS with support from the Gates Foundation.

“Reform leaders must do more than understand systems; they must inspire people, build trust, navigate competing interests, manage resistance, and sustain momentum when reforms become difficult,” Biteye said. The programme goes beyond conventional training through self-assessment, personal development plans, individual and group coaching, peer learning, technical seminars and case-based work on real public-finance challenges.

Gates Foundation senior programme officer Adil Ababou said the partnership reinforced the lesson that institutions and systems do not reform themselves. People lead reforms, he said, and many of the hardest public-finance problems involve consensus-building, resistance and coordination across institutional boundaries.

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Reform leaders must do more than understand systems; they must inspire people, build trust, navigate competing interests, manage resistance, and sustain momentum when reforms become difficult.