How jazz improvisation can help shape transformative governance in Africa

I recently watched Herbie Hancock describe a moment of pure stress with Miles Davis. In the middle of a solo, Hancock hit a wrong chord. But Miles didn’t treat it as a mistake; he took it as the new reality – data – and played into it creatively. What if that mindset could inspire a different way of governing in Africa? One that is inclusive, accelerates economic transformation and asserts the continent as a key player on the global stage. My conviction is that jazz improvisation, combined with our cultural foundations and the lessons of the informal sector, offers powerful clues for a transformative governance.

Why transformative governance matters

In July 2025, I sat on a panel organised by a development partner who was presenting its economic report about my country, Guinea. Sharing my views, I said that many of the issues raised—lack of economic diversification and inclusion, limited domestic resource mobilisation, poor public service and lack of modern infrastructure, limited financing for SMEs—only showed that much rests on the government’s shoulders. It is about public sector governance and its capacity to undergo a sweeping transformation.

What we have in many places across Africa has helped strengthen our internal caste systems: ethno-regional and gender hierarchies, the duality between formal and informal economies, between large firms and micro-enterprises, urban and rural. If we don’t challenge this system, reforms will keep rewarding insiders and trapping outsiders at the margins. That is where culture and language become strategic.

Culture and language at the heart of inclusive governance

A serious conversation about development starts with culture as the foundation of our governance, markets and institutions. When we speak of debt, public investment or development strategies: no need to speak or write in foreign languages. Truly people-centred governance implies that laws, public policies, citizen budgets and participation are written in the languages citizens speak. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has long argued that culture – our languages, stories, music, humour, fashion, movies – is how we contest these hierarchies.

Reforming governance must therefore mean reforming its linguistic infrastructure. In my time in government, I started these conversations with my team to see how we could borrow from our cultural metaphors and parables to translate key economic and financial reforms. My goal was not only to get citizens involved and hear their views but also use their buy-in as a shield against vested interests.

Rwanda’s « Imihigo » illustrates how culture can become a governance tool. Rooted in a tradition where individuals publicly pledged to meet demanding goals or face dishonour, it has been adapted into a national performance contract system. Local governments sign « Imihigo » with the state and are regularly evaluated on delivery, turning a cultural practice of public commitment into a mechanism for accountability and better services.

Jazz improvisation and the informal sector: navigating uncertainty

According to the African Development Bank, Africa’s average real GDP growth is projected at 4.2 per cent in 2025 and 4.3 per cent in 2026. That is encouraging. But we know there will be shocks and uncertainty.

In this context, informality is a technology of survival, adaptation and a shock absorber. It is how millions of Africans manage risk where formal systems are absent, slow or exclusionary: they work with what they have, rely on trust-based networks, adjust quickly and find workarounds that keep economic life moving. This capacity to operate in uncertainty is not marginal to Africa’s political economy – it lies at its core. It may be a silver lining for rethinking a governance that is nimbler and more honest about the world we live in.

The Davis–Hancock anecdote captures improvisation at its highest level with responsible adaptation. That is what the informal sector does instinctively: it does not wait for ideal conditions; it iterates constantly and turns constraints into workable solutions.

Directed improvisation for economic transformation and shared prosperity

For political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang, effective states rely on what she calls “directed improvisation”: they set direction and boundaries, then experiment and adjust, treating policy as a series of trials rather than a fixed script. This resembles what we did with a pilot project after the construction of a new National Treasury building. Instead of a conventional tender that might have selected a shell company and delivered mediocre imported furniture, we chose a competitive, though simplified, responsive process targeting local informal-sector carpenters in Conakry.

We identified craftsmen through a structured process familiar with the woodworking sector, ran a restricted consultation and asked candidates to produce a sample desk based on the Ministry’s specifications. A committee assessed quality and ranked the outputs. Around a dozen carpenters were selected and guided through the process, including very practical steps of formalisation and basic tax obligations.

Visiting their workshops was eye-opening. Capacity varied sharply: equipment was uneven, working conditions often unsafe, electricity unreliable, and premises precarious. Yet many were training young apprentices, including those in social reintegration, proof that informal enterprises carry social value and transmit skills. The result of the pilot was striking: the carpenters delivered the full order, on time and with quality. For me, this is what inclusive, transformative governance looks like in practice: an entrepreneurial state that uses real instruments – such as procurement – to create pathways from informality to capability, from exclusion to economic opportunity, and from imports to local value chains.

For too long, we may have been looking in the wrong direction – outward – when many of the answers were already inside our societies. Accepting reality as it is, drawing from our cultures, learning from what the informal sector does instinctively and adopting an entrepreneurial posture is one way to shape a governance that serves the many. Transformative governance, in this sense, is not theatre. But as we enter 2026, it might just be jazz!