AIG-Imoukhuede Foundation Africa Initiative For Governance (AIG) Public leaders

Deadline: 7th of April 2022.

Public sector executives ascending the ranks of government departments, agencies, ministries or multilateral organisations must maintain exemplary performance in their current role while developing the new skills and perspectives they will need to take on a top leadership role. The AIG Public Leaders Programme is designed to ensure these senior public leaders, and those who are moving into the senior leadership of the public-sector over the next three to seven years, master a range of new skills as quickly as possible.

The programme aims to broaden their skills as public leaders and provide them with the conceptual frameworks and practical tools they need to meet the challenges of a complex and rapidly changing world.

The AIG Public Leaders Programme offers insights from the world’s leading scholars and practitioners, and peer learning from participants’ counterparts. The learning experience is intense and demanding, engaging participants through a mixture of classroom discussion, simulations, practical exercises and group work.

GOVERNING IN TIMES OF CHANGE

Recognizing the speed and depth of change in today’s world, these sessions offer participants a stronger set of communication skills and a fresh understanding of the role of pragmatism, principle, framing, and inclusion as fundamental parts of public leadership in challenging times.

HARNESSING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

Exploring the myriad challenges of today’s ever-changing technological developments, these sessions look at how to manage technology. Participants will examine, among others, questions of cybersecurity, and threats newly enhanced by artificial intelligence, without losing sight of public interest.

DECISION-MAKING

While senior decision-makers pride themselves on using the best information and advice available, there is plenty of evidence that our decisions are too often colored by our psychological biases. Participants of AIG Public Leaders Programme will explore framing bias, confirmation bias, overconfidence bias and sunk-cost bias, as well as examples of group think. They will consider the consequences for decision-making and test some simple techniques to overcome these biases in individual and group decisions.

INTEGRITY

These sessions will explore how public leaders can build and promote integrity within their own organizations and what it means for an organization to be trustworthy. Participants will examine how difficult it can be to recognize integrity, the factors that cloud our ethical decisions, and the long-term damage to one’s leadership that can flow from a single misjudgement.

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Participants of the AIG Public Leaders Programme will explore what it means to lead an effective organization. They will consider who sets an organizations goals and values, and what counts as high performance. They will also look at the trends and cycles in organizational reform, and what evidence there is to support strategies of radical reform or incremental improvement. Participants will examine the tools that different administrations use to improve performance, including target-setting, data generation and outsourcing.

Eligibility

Candidates will be chosen based on their public sector experience and achievements, proven leadership qualities, intellectual abilities, and personal motivations and ambitions.

To be eligible for AIG Public Leaders Programme, candidates must:

Be citizens of any African country and actively working within the public sector in Africa
Have a minimum of seven years’ of active service in the public sector
Be at a Directorate level
Provide evidence of game-changing leadership qualities and abilities
Provide a letter of endorsement from the ministry, department or agency for which they work
Provide a record of promotion within the ministry, department or agency for which they work, recording promotions over the most recent five (5) years.

The letter of endorsement affirms that the candidate is the right fit for the AIG Public Leaders Programme and, if shortlisted, the applicant will be allowed to participate in all programme activities.

Letters of endorsement should be prepared using the Ministry/Department/Agency’s letterhead and the letter should be addressed to: