We need LEADERS, not ELITES or even true leaders in elites

Comrade_007, what do you mean with

laws that curtail this conspicuous consumption spedning and behaviour in the interest of building our economies and societies

What exactly do you propose? That people are only allowed to spend X amount on luxuries? I don't think regulating these matters by law is realistic. What that is I don't know but ehy don't we throw some ideas around?

What I do agree with you in the meantime is that the role of the political and business elites on our Continent - in collusion with the political and business elites - are essentially keeping Africans in the bottom billion of the world's poor.

How?

In his acclaimed 2007 work The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Paul Collier writes:

The prevailing conditions bring out extremes. Leaders are sometimes psychopaths who have shot their way to power, sometimes crooks who have bought it, and sometimes brave people who, against all the odds, are trying to build a better future.

Even the appearance of modern governments in these states is sometimes a facade, as if the leaders are reading from a script. They sit at the international negotiation tables, such as the World Trade Organisation, but they have nothing to negotiate. The seats stay occupied even in the face of meltdown societies: The government of Somalia continued to be officially 'represented' in the international arena for years after Somalia ceased to have a functioning government in the country itself.

So don't expect the governments of the bottom billion to unite in forming a practical agenda: they are fractured between villains and heroes, and some of them are barely there. For our future world to be livable the heroes must win their struggle. But the villains have the guns and the money and, to date, they have usually prevailed. That will continue unless we radically change our approach

The heroes are the leaders that Oneword refers to, I think, and the true leadership they bring to our Governments in the face of all the villains.