1 Business Leadership in Africa: A Personal Integrity Challenge

In Africa, the concept that business leaders and managers have any positive moral obligations as roleplayers in a nation‟s development in the pursuit of the common good is rare. Such individuals view their ethical obligations primarily as negative constraints – do not engage in corruption, fraud, or false advertising, avoid conflicts of interest, etc. – the idea that business leaders and managers have an essential and positive ethical role in combination with both the public and the civil society sectors is largely either unfamiliar or rejected by African business leadership. This paper considers why and how business managers and leaders should transform African businesses to exemplify a new, more ethical, and explicitly developmental role in a market that admittedly provides few obvious incentives and many disincentives for those who seek to take a higher moral stand. The paper describes the essential role of leadership in business within developing countries in the context of a wide variety of ethical challenges, from the international to the uniquely local, and from the institutional to the personal