The Elite Africa Project is a global network of scholars working to shift how Africa and its elites are understood.

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to The Elite Africa Project

Watch a video introduction to the project and database.

Featured Posts

Introducing: The Elite Africa Project Database

Learn more about the Elite Africa Project and our Online Database!

Dafe Oputu

Scholar Spotlight: Jeanne-Marie Jackson - Part 2

Part 2 of our interview with Professor of English Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Elite Africa Roundup - 7 May 2025

DRC-Rwanda peace deal, remembering Congolese prof. Mudimbe, and more

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Elite Africa Roundup - 21 April 2025

Tracking a wave of political repression, Ethiopia wins Paris marathon

Domains of Elite Power

The mechanics of how power—the essential condition of elite status—is meaningfully generated and exercised

Economic

Economic and business elites

Coercive

Military elites and those in security agencies

Ritual

Royalty, nobles, “traditional” rulers

Aesthetic

Art, literature, music- and media-based elites including new online influencers, clothing designers, architects, etc.

Religious

Religious and spiritual leaders, and intellectual/academic elites

Political

State-based or state-focused elites including international techno/bureaucrats

The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

Burna Boy, Nigerian musician, rapper and songwriter; in 2021, his album Twice as Tall won the Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, and he enjoyed back to back Grammy award nominations in 2019 and 2020.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigerian economist, fair trade leader, environmental sustainability advocate, human welfare champion, sustainable finance maven and global development expert. Since March 2021, Okonjo-Iweala has been serving as Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

This project focuses on Africa’s elites, defined as those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. While elites are those who possess the most consequential and powerful agenda-setting and decision-making capacity, Africa’s elites have either been sidelined in many of our analyses or rendered monotonal. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

We look at six domains of elite power, from the political to the aesthetic, and ask how we might shift how we think about and study Africa, and how this shift would impact our conceptualization of power and its exercise. Our goal is to contribute to popular conversations about Africa and to highlight the achievements of the astonishing new generation of leaders for a broader public audience.

This website will serve as a hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian-born diplomat, trained in economics, international relations and management; was the first UNSG to be elected from within the ranks of the UN staff itself and served in various key roles before becoming Secretary General.

Namwali Serpell, Zambia award-winning novelist and writer; Recognised early on with the Caine prize, her numerous subsequent awards include the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, one of the world’s richest literary prizes.

Mohammed "Mo" Ibrahim, Sudanese billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

This project focuses on Africa’s elites — those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

This website is the hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and will house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

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ELITE AFRICA PROJECT DATABASE

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Jordans, Eva., Bettina. Ng’weno, and Helen. Spencer-Oatey. Developing Global Leaders Insights from African Case Studies. 1st ed. 2020. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14606-1.

This book explores how today’s leaders in Africa perceive their role, the challenges they experience, and how they operate effectively as leaders. In the era of globalization, there is an increasing need to offer guidance on how leaders can adjust their leadership style to suit situational contexts. This book illustrates how leadership can be developed and incorporates practical suggestions and tools for current and forthcoming leaders in Africa. It will contribute to the development of a new community of leaders integrating cutting-edge knowledge on leadership development in Africa.

Source: Book description by publisher

Jordans, Eva., Bettina. Ng’weno, and Helen. Spencer-Oatey. Developing Global Leaders Insights from African Case Studies

This is some text inside of a div block.

This book explores how today’s leaders in Africa perceive their role, the challenges they experience, and how they operate effectively as leaders. In the era of globalization, there is an increasing need to offer guidance on how leaders can adjust their leadership style to suit situational contexts.

Economic
Political

Falola, Toyin. “Global African Business Leaders.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Africa and the Changing Global Order, 1099–1115. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77481-3_54.

This (book) chapter examines the contribution of leading African business leaders on the continent. Despite the projection that an increased African population poses a great danger in terms of instability and conflict, the business leaders continue to build businesses that generate employment for millions of Africans. While it certainly constitutes a worry that many experts believe that the future of the continent is cloudy if activities continue in this fashion, it is not also improbable that some forward-looking, young individuals from the continent may use their ingenuity to help solve the crisis. Hence, the emergence of a business-oriented generation of Africans who have immediately swung into action to take advantage of the opportunities open to the continent. While doing this, these sets of Africans concentrate on economic activities that can maximize the population potential. They have recorded considerable progress in their business engagement and in making enviable contributions to the global economy’s advancement, using their African potentials. In this writing, a number of these African business leaders are examined, looking at the contributions they make.

Source: Excerpt from chapter's abstract.

Falola, Toyin. Global African Business Leaders

This is some text inside of a div block.

This (book) chapter examines the contribution of leading African business leaders on the continent. Despite the projection that an increased African population poses a great danger in terms of instability and conflict, the business leaders continue to build businesses that generate employment for millions of Africans.

Economic

Kinnear, Lisa, and Karen Ortlepp. “Emerging Models of Power among South African Women Business Leaders.” SA Journal of Industrial Psychology 42, no. 1 (2016): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v42i1.1359.

Women leaders’ discourse of power needs to be better understood to enable a more conscious approach to gender transformation that takes women’s perspectives into account. This article reviews women leaders’ construction of power within a feminist framework which recognises that leadership and power theories are not neutral because they have been developed within a patriarchal context, resulting in the performativity of gender against restricted set of norms(Butler, 1990; Fletcher, 2004; Lazar, 2005).

Source: Introduction to article

Kinnear, Lisa, and Karen Ortlepp. Emerging Models of Power among South African Women Business Leaders

This is some text inside of a div block.

This article reviews women leaders’ construction of power within a feminist framework which recognises that leadership and power theories are not neutral because they have been developed within a patriarchal context, resulting in the performativity of gender against restricted set of norms(Butler, 1990; Fletcher, 2004; Lazar, 2005).

Economic

McDonnell, Erin Metz. “Conciliatory States: Elite Ethno-Demographics and the Puzzle of Public Goods Within Diverse African States.” Comparative Political Studies 49, no. 11 (2016): 1513–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414015626441.

This article analyzes the puzzle of Ghana, the 12th most diverse state globally, yet among the most peaceful, democratic, and developed African states. It argues the position of post-independence political elites within ethno-demographic structures helps explain why some diverse African states pursued broad nation-building public goods, mitigating the political salience of diversity. Diversity encouraged provision of social goods with broad-based support in states with a modest plurality—not large enough to dominate, but without proximately sized ethnic groups—especially for leaders from a minority. Comparative historical analysis of Ghana is expanded with abbreviated case studies on Guinea, Togo, and Kenya.

Source: Article's abstract

McDonnell, Erin Metz. Conciliatory States

This is some text inside of a div block.

This article analyzes the puzzle of Ghana, the 12th most diverse state globally, yet among the most peaceful, democratic, and developed African states. It argues the position of post-independence political elites within ethno-demographic structures helps explain why some diverse African states pursued broad nation-building public goods, mitigating the political salience of diversity.

Economic
Political

Seekings, Jeremy, and Nicoli Nattrass. “State-Business Relations and pro-Poor Growth in South Africa.” Journal of International Development 23, no. 3 (2011): 338–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.1774.

By comparison with most African countries, post-apartheid South Africa appears to be characterised by growth-oriented cooperation between state and business. Economic growth has remained weak, however, and income poverty persists as the economy continues down an inegalitarian growth path that fails to reduce unemployment and thus has little effect on poverty. This paper argues that the appearance of close state-business relations is misleading: selectively pro-market public policies have not reflected a pro-business orientation on the part of the state. The governing African National Congress concurred with established business on the need for increased productivity and selective state interventions in a mixed economy. But most of the political elite overestimated the commandist powers of the state in the short-term, viewed established South African business with deep suspicion if not hostility, and was unwilling to deliberate or negotiate on distributional issues in either formal bilateral or corporatist institutions, or even informally. The state sought to discipline and transform business, not work with it. Unable to sustain an active growth coalition, a pro-poor, developmental coalition was far out of reach. The politics of the governing party precluded substantive concessions on labour market regulation and pushed it towards ever more interventionist ‘black economic empowerment’ policies. The result was that economic growth remained modest, and of little benefit to the poor.

Source: Article's abstract

Seekings, Jeremy, and Nicoli Nattrass. State-Business Relations and pro-Poor Growth in South Africa.

This is some text inside of a div block.

This paper argues that the appearance of close state-business relations is misleading: selectively pro-market public policies have not reflected a pro-business orientation on the part of the state.

Economic
Political

Jalloh, Alusine. “Muslim Fula Business Elites and Politics in Sierra Leone.” African Economic History 35, no. 35 (2007): 89–104. https://doi.org/10.2307/25427036.

This essay examines Fula business-government relations in post independence Sierra Leone. It focuses on Muslim Fula business elites. In particular, the essay examines two key themes where the Fula interacted with the Sierra Leonean government: immigration and business. The period covered is from 1961, the date of independence, under the rule of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) led by Sir Milton Margai.

Source: Extract from article's introduction.

Jalloh, Alusine. Muslim Fula Business Elites and Politics in Sierra Leone

This is some text inside of a div block.

This essay examines Fula business-government relations in post independence Sierra Leone. It focuses on Muslim Fula business elites.

Economic
Political
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