Leadership and identity in precolonial African contexts: a retrospective account

Abstract

This chapter examines the leadership practices of precolonial African societies. Multidisciplinary scholarly accounts of leadership were examined using the social identity markers of precolonial societal and community organisation, ethnicity, gender, and social stratification. The emerging picture is one of traditional African rulerships that vary across social identity markers mediated through traditional polities or forms of social relations. What became evident was the diversity of complex, context-bounded forms of leadership and leadership practices. In precolonial societies, leaders and their followers had the opportunity to engage each other in leadership actions or processes, depending on whether the communal contexts they operated within enabled or constrained either authoritative leadership or democratic co-participation in the leadership processes. The sociopolitical complexities from which leaders and their followers operated created contexts for leadership outcomes ranging from the ethical to the unethical, and from the socially just to the unjust.