Contextualised Transformational Leadership and Institutional Reform in Selected African Public Agencies: A Systematised Narrative Review

This article examines transformational leadership as a possible contributor to institutional reform in selected African public agencies. It argues that transformational leadership cannot be treated as a portable managerial technique that automatically improves public administration. In African public-sector settings, leadership effects are shaped by institutional capacity, political incentives, ethical credibility, administrative traditions, citizen trust, and socio-cultural expectations about collective responsibility. Using a systematised narrative review and doctrinal-policy synthesis, the article brings together leadership theory, African public administration literature, governance datasets and selected country examples from Rwanda, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. The paper develops a Contextualised Transformational Leadership for African Public Agencies (CTL-APA) framework. The framework identifies five conditions under which transformational leadership behaviours are most likely to support reform: ethical credibility, Ubuntu-informed collective purpose, institutional capacity building, accountability architecture and adaptive service innovation. Current governance evidence is used cautiously. The 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance reports that overall governance progress in Africa stalled in 2022 after a period of near stagnation, while Afrobarometer evidence shows declining citizen trust in several public institutions across surveyed countries. These patterns support the article's central argument that leadership reform must be connected to institutional legitimacy rather than framed only as individual charisma. The article concludes that transformational leadership may support reform where leaders are ethically credible, institutionally constrained, administratively capable and embedded in systems of citizen accountability. Where these conditions are absent, transformational language can become symbolic, personalistic or even pseudo-transformational. The contribution of the article is therefore not a claim that transformational leadership is a universal remedy, but a safer framework for adapting it to African public agencies in ways that are culturally grounded, institutionally realistic and evidence-aware.