Leadership Failure and National Underdevelopment in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born: A Postcolonial Reading

Literature is often described as a mirror of society. It is a reflexion of social realities, portrays human experiences, criticizes social problems, and influences social change. After independence, African writers and scholars began to criticize the problems of leadership and governance as major obstacles to national development. This study aims to investigate the causes of national underdevelopment in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Using postcolonial lens and close textual analysis, the researcher comes up with the findings such as the underdevelopment in post-independence Africa is due to problems of poor leadership and governance; political corruption and moral degeneration; replication of colonial exploitative ideology by African elites; and the absence of visionary leadership. Armah, through his novel, argues that “The Beautiful Ones Will Be Born” not through independence alone or a mere replacement of one group of leaders with another, but through the moral renewal and integrity of citizens and society, which will then bring about genuine transformation.

leadership failure, corruption, moral decay, underdevelopment, Postcolonial Africa

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