Former Presidential Affairs Minister, Momodou Sabally, has told a crop of young leaders from across the African continent to take up the challenge of providing a fresh kind of transformational leadership for a better contingent.
Sabally was speaking at a forum and award ceremony convened by the Confederation of West African Youths at Golden Tulip Hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
“What we need is a new crop of leaders that would help us walk on the waters of Information Communication Technology and break bread in the labs of new food technology. But such a new leadership must stop aping the methods of the West whole scale without scrutiny. Such a leadership must look back at our rich and dignified past and take from it what’s best and brightest and apply its lessons in inspiring dynamic ways. Such a leadership would learn and appropriate lessons from far and wide but it must never cut, copy and paste.” He asserted.
Citing the Sierra Leonean Government’s recent rejection of an offer of a modern airport by China, Sabally told the gathering of government officials and young leaders that the envisaged new transformational leadership he hopes for the African continent would be one with “unwavering courage. The courage to take tough decisions and to defy interests and tendencies that want to game our systems or bait us with alluring present gains at the cost of our entire future.“
In conclusion, he implored the youth leaders thus: “The new kind of leadership envisaged must be one to rise above our current challenges and dream beyond the tough cliffs and lift our imagination into the glorious valleys of future bliss. This is a kind of leadership that should thrive on inspired vision.”
The youth confab, which was also the occasion for the award of honours for deserving recipients, saw the conferment of Most Influential Person Awards to Sabally alongside UTG senior lecturer and government critic Dr ismaila Ceesay.
