Women Leaders Are Burning Out – Africa Cannot Afford to Look Away
Across Africa, we celebrate women who “hold it all together.”
The CEO who outperforms targets.
The principal secretary who works past midnight.
The NGO director who carries it all on her shoulders. The same
shoulders carry the donors, staff, communities, and the home.
But the latest McKinsey–Lean In report reveals an uncomfortable truth: women at the top are exhausted and burned out.
Not because they are weak , but because leadership systems are quietly draining them.
For African organizations, this is not just a gender issue.
It is a leadership sustainability issue.
Here are five leadership lessons African boards, CEOs and public-sector leaders must urgently confront.
- We Praise Endurance Instead of Fixing Systems
In many Kenyan and African workplaces, long hours are worn like a badge of honour.
The leader who never rests is admired. The one who asks for support is questioned and their competence doubted.
Yet women leaders often carry extra, invisible work ranging from mentoring younger staff, managing emotions, to advancing inclusion, all these with little or no recognition.
Lesson:
Endurance is not excellence. Sustainable leadership requires systems that share the load, not heroes who carry it alone.
2. Representation Without Real Power Is a Trap
Research on tokenism finds that women in minority leadership positions are visible but isolated
Consequently, they may face higher performance pressures, less access to informal networks, and fewer opportunities to influence outcomes, compared with environments where women are genuinely integrated into authority structures.
There are some organizations which proudly showcase women in leadership roles, yet deny them real authority, budgets or decision-making space.
This creates pressure without power and visibility without voice.
Lesson:
Representation must come with resources, respect and real influence. Otherwise, leadership becomes theatrical, making burnout inevitable.
- Flexibility Is Critical in African Leadership Realities
Many women leaders balance demanding roles with caregiving, extended family responsibilities, and community expectations.
To make it worse, all is done within economies that already stretch time and energy thin.
Lesson:
Flexible work is not a luxury. In African contexts, it is a leadership enabler that retains talent and protects performance.
4. Burnout at the Top Weakens Institutions
An exhausted leader leads with survival, not vision. Meetings feel heavier.
Decisions slow. Teams disengage.
We often ask, “Why is morale low?”
Sometimes the answer is simple: the leaders are depleted.
Lesson:
Leader well-being is an institutional risk issue and not a personal weakness.
5. Resilience Should Not Be the Price of Leadership
In some set ups, women leaders are often told, “You are strong.”
Whilst this should motivate the leader to soldier on, in some instances, it has been used to stretch the leader beyond bearable limits.
Sooner or later, they realise that strength without support becomes silent punishment.
Lesson:
The future of leadership is not tougher women. It is smarter governance, humane cultures, and respectful workloads.
Conclusion
Africa is investing heavily in leadership development, ethics, and governance – and rightly so.
However, we must ask a harder question:
What kind of leaders are our systems producing, and at what cost?
If women at the top are burning out, then leadership itself needs redesigning.
Because when leaders thrive, institutions thrive.
And Africa cannot afford to lose its most capable leaders to quiet exhaustion.
“Burnout is contagious. When leaders are depleted, disengagement and dysfunction cascade throughout the organization.”
– Gallup Workplace Research
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