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An elite should not have clients, but heirs
The responsibility is therefore twofold. Communities must stop treating their elites as permanent dispensers of favors. And elites must stop viewing knowledge, networks, and opportunities as their personal property. Research on aspirations offers an interesting lesson here: when individuals see a credible and accessible path forward, their perception of what is possible can change. The World Bank has described the opposite phenomenon as an“ aspiration trap,” where poverty and limited prospects narrow what individuals believe they can achieve. The true duty of an elite, then, may not be to distribute indefinitely. It is to make its path understandable and, as much as possible, replicable. And in Africa, the success of a minister from a particular region should no longer be celebrated because he can distribute a hundred jobs to his own people, but because he has built an administration in which a hundred competent young people, regardless of their background, can obtain those jobs according to clear rules.
For corruption and favoritism do not strengthen institutions in the long run. Studies using Afrobarometer data have concluded that corruption does not produce the increased institutional trust that its defenders might attribute to it on the pretext that it facilitates access to scarce resources. Perhaps this, in the end, is the choice facing all societies where elites are few and far between. We can turn a successful person into a patron, surrounded by people waiting for their share. Or into a replicable role model, surrounded by people trying to become as competent as he is. In the first model, everyone tries to get on the elevator with the person who has already arrived. In the second, someone eventually learns how to build more elevators. And it is only then that an individual’ s success truly begins to translate into progress for the community.
Flashmag! Edition 176 Septembre 2026
Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr. Journalist
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