British High Commissioner to Kenya Christian Turner (right), chats with Prof Francis Fukuyama (centre) and the Dean, Strathmore Business School, George Njenga.  [PHOTO: FIDELIS KBUNYI/STANDARD]

By MAUREEN ABWAO and MARGRET KANINI                        

NAIROBI, KENYA: A leading intellectual has asked African leaders to guarantee the security of their people.

Francis Fukuyama, who is listed among the world’s top 100 thinkers, further urged leaders to strengthen political structures in their respective countries.

Prof Fukuyama said western powers should instigate and maintain sanity in developing states, which means doing away with providing ammunitions to these countries.

He urged citizens to help their governments in nation building, saying this “is the responsibility of all citizens of the world”.

Fukuyama made the remarks during a public lecture at Strathmore Business School in Nairobi, which saw more than 35 senior government officials and business leaders from Kenya and East Africa attend to seek better and new ways of exploring how their governments can encourage and enable private sector to play a bigger role in economic growth and development.

Fukuyama added that new governments need wings to provide short-term strategies and achievements that will bring about prosperity to their countries.

He engaged the audience on issues of democratic order and addressed reasons why some societies have gone down the democratic route and achieved stability while others have stagnated with autocratic forms of governance.

The scholar also gave a history of the pre-colonial African states and how the forms of leadership administered have influenced present-day governments, citing the example of Northern Nigeria, whose indirect form of rule to date influences the states there.

He lauded countries like Kenya that have embraced the three main principles of state, rule of law and accountability and are moving towards economic progression.

The talk was organised by Strathmore’s Centre for Public Policy and Competitiveness in collaboration with the leadership Academy of Development, an affiliate of the John’s Hopkins University School of Advanced and International Studies (USA). This was Fukuyama’s third visit to Africa.

On the crisis facing South Sudan, he related the crisis in the war torn country with weak states, which failed to provide strong political structures to its citizens.