Improving mindsets: the leading leadership challenge in East Africa development.

As a sprouting leader, I have perceived that it is the poor mindsets of East Africans that have hindered the overall development of East Africa which is amazingly gifted with vast wealth. This includes the leaders of the nations that comprise the community.

Our flawed mindset falsely informs us that we are inferior, that we must always look to the West for answers and solutions. It also misleads us into thinking that we do not have the resources we need to create wealth. A poor mindset blinds us to the opportunities that are widely available and that have attracted foreign nationals who see what we do not see.

Changing mindsets will be done thorough improved education and mental development starting from home, school, and the society at large. Many leaders do not know that they are stakeholders in the mindset development of the citizens at the highest level of human interaction. At home, it is the responsibility of the parents while at school it is the teachers and lastly the political and religious leaders.

Great anticipated change in development will always fail to take place unless all the stakeholders speak the same language and share the same cause for action. We are reminded in Genesis in the Bible where human kind was able to build a great tower to heaven because they all spoke the same language and had the same mindset. Being a populous region of 150 million plus should not be a limiting factor because countries like China have been able to achieve their dream of world power development because the majority of their citizens have the same mindset and speak the same language. We need to be one people, to have one destiny.

As East Africans we will need to work towards bringing on board all people irrespective of their social status, ethnicity, and economic class and religious inclinations and unite as one with the same purpose of building a mighty East Africa. We need to be culturally sensitive and competent.

Changing our education system to become one that encourages innovation and creativity rather than cram work will enable us to overcome the copycat syndrome that breeds only passivity and inappropriate adoption of unsustainable and irrelevant change. The various school curriculum should fit today's and tomorrow's needs but not those of yesterday's industrial revolution as set by our former colonialists. Vocational training should be positively embraced.

Promoting young people in positions of leadership can also help foster new ideas in governance that can transform society since they bring new perspectives. The world is revolving very fast and for development to competitively fairly occur, we need the fresh youthful input they are exposed to new ideas and think far much better than the older generation.

All citizens in the East African community need to attain the new mindset that they are leaders by virtual of their estate and need to be accountable first to themselves and then the community at large. Just as charity begins at home, so does leadership begin with self.

As Sssesanga Dennis Ernest, being a proud Ugandan and a delighted default member of the East African community, I strongly believe that the poor midset challenge can collectively be solved right from the grass roots of the home to community level with enough cultural competence and sensitivity and a rightful personal mindset. “One people, one destiny!”

The writer is a public health graduate of International Health Sciences University.