Leaders of the Kingdom of Eswatini gathered at the Happy Valley Hotel on Monday, 21 September 2026, for the Kingdom Leadership and National Transformation Seminar. The keynote speaker was Prof. Delanyo Adadevoh, founder and President of the International Leadership Foundation (ILF) and Senior Global Vice President of Campus Crusade for Christ, who spoke on three foundations of transformational leadership: integrity, freedom and justice, and stewardship.
The audience reflected the breadth of leadership that national transformation requires: Cabinet Ministers, Members of both Houses of Parliament, Principal Secretaries, senior government officials and members of Campus Crusade for Christ. For ILF, it was a powerful expression of its conviction that nations are transformed when leaders in every sphere of society share a common commitment to integrity.
Think generationally
Prof. Adadevoh encouraged the Kingdom’s leaders to approach development with a long horizon, beyond the life of any single government or strategic plan:
There are many nations in Africa and across the world that are desiring for new futures and they are working on plans for their development. My recommendation is that when we are looking at the transformation of a nation, you have to think generationally. Develop a generational plan that addresses all the major tracks for development and then the details can be worked out with your long-term strategic plans.
Prof. Delanyo Adadevoh
A positive self-identity
He also spoke to the mindset that makes transformation possible, a theme at the heart of ILF’s work of “creating new futures through mindset shift”:
What I’d like to recommend for my fellow Africans is the value of positive self-identity. It is important to know yourself, to appreciate yourself and to accept yourself. If you don’t have a positive self-identity, you cannot fight your way through the jungles of life.
Prof. Delanyo Adadevoh
Integrity: a responsibility for every citizen
Integrity, which ILF holds as the primary qualification for leadership, ran through the whole address. Prof. Adadevoh reminded participants that it is not only a question for those in office:
You can invest capital. You can have the best brains on the board. You can even have very skilled management, but if the ordinary citizens do not have integrity, integrity that will also invite a high sense of patriotism, then institutions cannot stand the test of time. So, we don’t only point at our leaders, we must also point at ourselves.
Prof. Delanyo Adadevoh
“Development cannot permanently be imported”
Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini used the seminar to call for a fundamental shift in how Eswatini approaches national development: from dependency and consumption towards greater self-reliance, productivity, ownership and value creation. He observed that Africa has for too long remained a spectator in the exploitation of its own resources, despite abundant land, minerals, energy, human capital and markets.
Development cannot permanently be imported. Investment and international partnerships remain necessary and welcome, but they must complement, not substitute, our own national agency. We must become the principal authors, investors and beneficiaries of Eswatini’s development.
Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini
Recalling the mandate given by His Majesty King Mswati III to transform the Kingdom, the Prime Minister said the message was clear: “we must think bigger, act faster and be courageous enough to do things differently. Transformation therefore begins in the mind.”
He called for a new national confidence, “an Africa that believes in Africans; an Eswatini that believes in emaSwati”, and cautioned that imported political or economic models are no cure in themselves: institutions succeed when they command legitimacy, uphold justice, protect human dignity and respond to the history, culture and circumstances of the people they serve.
Personal ambition must yield to national interest. Political interest must yield to national interest. Institutional interest must yield to national interest. Our generation must be prepared to sacrifice something of itself so that the generation after us may inherit something greater. Yet no transformation will endure without integrity.
Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini
What it means for ILF Eswatini
The seminar’s message mirrors ILF’s own mission of building leaders of integrity for societal transformation, and its values of personal transformation, contextual relevance and holistic transformation across every sphere of society. When a Prime Minister says that transformation begins in the mind and that no transformation will endure without integrity, he is describing the very work ILF exists to do.
ILF Eswatini looks forward to working with leaders in government, faith communities, business, education and civil society to turn these convictions into lasting change, through programmes such as the Transforming Leadership & Governance Seminars, values-based coaching and the Young Leaders League.
To bring a Transforming Leadership & Governance Seminar to your ministry, church, company or school, please contact ILF Eswatini through this website.