On the 25^th day of October 2018, a unanimous decision by members of the Federal Parliamentary Assembly in Ethiopia led to the installation of Sahle Work Zewde, a lifelong career diplomat, as the first female President of the country, and the second Head of State since its inception after Empress Zewditu. The decision to elect Zewde as President of Ethiopia saw her replace former President, Mulatu Teshome, to actively take on the reins of leadership in a beloved country in which she has served in different capacities. Presently, only two female heads of State exist in Africa, and Zewde’s testament to the leadership and advancing the cause of good governance since her appointment speaks volumes of her lifelong ability in the path of rendering service in every position she has occupied.

Though the worlds of politics and business are profoundly different, Merkel’s leadership traits offer plenty of pointers for entrepreneurs who are fond of learning lessons from the larger stage of global government. She has never been afraid to be a lone voice. In fact, Merkel is accustomed to minority platforms. She is a divorced Protestant in a Catholic party. She is from East Germany, entering politics as “an Ossi in the newly unified Germany of the 1990s where easterners were still aliens,” notes Time. Her educational background is not in politics or international relations but in quantum chemistry. And of course, she’s a woman, another identifier in which she’s had to stand more or less on her own. She is a master of leading from behind – Merkel has “proudly practiced what Willy Brandt once called Die Politik der kleinen Schritte (the politics of baby steps), or as we call…

By Miracle Nwankwo

After organizing the protests that ousted the three-decade rule of Sudan’s autocratic President Omar al-Bashir on 11 April 2019, Sudanese women are playing a prominent role in the country’s new transitional government, as they seek to overturn many of the restrictive Islamic laws that stifle women’s rights enforced by the former government.