Writing is how I think slowly about the things I work on quickly. These books are the residue of nearly two decades of practice.
I write because I believe the gap between knowing and doing is one of the most consequential distances in human development. Most of what passes for leadership content in Africa is borrowed — borrowed frameworks, borrowed language, borrowed examples that do not map onto the realities of the communities these books are supposed to serve.
Atunko Idari was different. Writing it in Yoruba was not a symbolic act. It was a recognition that if leadership formation cannot happen in the language a people actually think in, then we are only reaching the people who can afford to think in a borrowed one — and leaving the rest behind.
Atunko Idari
Unlearning Leadership in Yoruba
Written in Yoruba — an indigenous Nigerian language
Atunko Idari is an adaptation of Unlearning Leadership, rendered entirely in Yoruba. The title means unlearning in Yoruba. The book was written for the communities that leadership development in Africa has consistently left behind — rural communities, non-Western-educated readers, people who think and dream and lead in their mother tongue.
It is also a cultural argument: that a people who cannot speak their identity in their own language have already begun to lose it.
The Rank Shifting
Leadership does not happen at a single level. It shifts — from the self to the team, from the team to the community, from the community to the institution. For anyone who senses that the next level is available but cannot quite name what is holding them back.
Buy on AmazonThe Transformers
Change happens because of people who decide — often without being asked, often without a title — that they will take ownership of what needs to change. Written for practitioners, not theorists.
Buy on AmazonUnlearning Leadership 1
Most of what we have been taught about leadership is wrong. Not slightly off — structurally wrong. This first volume systematically dismantles those assumptions.
Buy on AmazonUnlearning Leadership 2
If the first volume asks what leadership is not, this volume asks what it actually is. The constructive half of the argument: what leadership looks like when practised from the inside out.
Buy on AmazonIf your institution, programme, or organisation would like to order multiple copies for leadership training, curriculum development, or distribution, please get in touch directly.
Leadership Lens publishes weekly — thinking on leadership, civic policy, and Africa’s future. Free. Direct. Worth your time.