What We seek to achieve
The African continent is very rich and diverse. There are abundant human and natural resources in the continent. But the continent has the worst development indices in the world: maternal mortality, infant mortality, literacy rate, HIV/AIDs prevalence, poverty rate, life expectancy etc.
More than half of the population of African people are living in abject poverty. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa are unlikely to achieve the modest Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by world leaders at the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000. Many African countries continue to suffer food shortages. Some countries are in conflict. We have experienced democratic reversals in some countries with the military coming to power in Guinea Bissau.
All of these make the development of Africa a huge challenge. The continents efforts to grapple with the developmental challenges have been complicated by its colonial history, globalisation, leadership failures and adoption of development approaches that have been proved to be inadequate. The importance of leadership for the success of organizations and nations cannot be overemphasized. Some scholars have pointed out that everything rises and falls on leadership.
Despite this recognition, there is scarcity of leaders all over the world. There is a saying that the world is filled with followers, supervisors and managers but very few leaders. There are four kinds of people in the world: those who watch things happen; those who let things happen; those who ask what happened and those who make things happen. Leaders are those who make things happen.
A visionless, insecure and incompetent leadership is a killer of organization and nations. Similarly, strategy is very crucial to the development and performance of any organisation or nation. Strategy occupies a central position in the focus and proper functioning of any organization or nation.
This is because it is a plan that integrates an organizations or nations major goals, policies and action into a cohesive whole. A well formulated strategy should therefore help to marshal and allocate an organisations or nations resources into a unique and viable posture based on its relative internal competencies and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the environment, and contingent moves by others. Strategies help to create a sense of politics, purpose and priorities.
A dynamic and visionary leadership combined with appropriate strategy process will produce a correct development approach that will lead to the prosperity and development of Africa. Centre LSD is poised to contributing to the transformation of Africa through building dynamic and visionary leadership and proposing appropriate strategies and development approaches.
The major focus of work will be in the giant of Africa “Nigeria but the centre will work across Africa with a Pan-African perspective with partners in all the sub-regions in Africa. The Centres strategy, programme and actions will focus on Africa with the operations being run from Nigeria partnering with organisations across Africa.
Centre LSD is registered with Corporate Affairs Commission as an NGO in Nigeria.Centre LSDs VisionThe vision of Centre LSD is an African society where there is dynamic, strategic and visionary leadership committed to sustainable development.
Centre LSDs Mission
The Centres mission is to work with forces of positive change to transform society through appropriate leadership, strategy and development approaches.
Centre LSDs Values
The centre is guided by the following values:
Transparency and accountability Integrity
Transformative change
Feminism Diversity
Dignity of the human person
Pan-Africanism
The objectives of the Centre include:
1. To promote ideas, policies and actions that will lead to transformative change in Africa.
2. To promote leader development (expanding the capacity of individuals for effective leadership roles and processes) and leadership development (expansion of organisations capacity to enact basic leadership tasks including setting direction, creating alignment and maintaining commitment).3.
To develop the capacity for strategic thinking, formulation, implantation, implementation and evaluation
.4. To promote human centred and sustainable development with special focus on Governance, Human Centred Development and Environment.
5. To collaborate with individuals, organisations, networks, coalitions and movements that will help in achieving the Centres objectives.
OPERATIONAL APPROACH
The Centre will carry out its programmes through the following methods: Research Think Thank Capacity Building Advocacy and Campaigns
PROGRAMMATIC APPROACH
The Centres programme is built on the principles of catalytic partnership and rights based approach.
The programme conception, design, implementation and evaluation is built around four pillars:
1. Dynamic and visionary leadership
2. Appropriate strategy
3. Relevant development approaches including the promotion of womens rights, citizen participation, ownership, pro-poor orientation and focus on the next generation of youth and children.
4. Building people and institutions
.ORGANS OF CENTRE
LSD International Advisory Council
Pharm. Joel Omonigho, United Kingdom
Dr. Omano Edigheji, South Africa
Dr. John Ojediran, Nigeria
Ms. Amanda Serumaga, Uganda
Mr. John Samuel, India
Mr. Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwe
Board of Trustees
Mr. Jimi Agbaje
Mrs. Maryam UwaisEngr.
(Dr.) Tony Dzegede
Hajia Amina az-Zubair
Mrs. Eugenia Abu
Executive DirectorDr. Otive Igbuzor
