Political leaders loom large in African politics and development processes. They took center stage in public life after newly independent states emerged in the region, mostly in the early 1960s, and they grew ever more prominent over the better part of subsequent decades, favored by a widespread and persistent weakness of political institutions. As the developmental failures of most sub-Saharan economies became manifest, particularly from the 1980s onward, the ruinous leadership of many among them became obvious, if often only implicitly.