Asher's Blog

A society cannot outgrow its definition of success. Whatever a society consistently celebrates becomes an instruction to the next generation. The people placed on stages, given awards, invited into respected institutions and presented as role models are not merely being honoured. They are being advertised. Young people look at them and learn what the community rewards, what it overlooks and what kind of life appears worth pursuing.

If success is defined only by money, the lesson is simple: acquire money. If success is defined by power, become powerful; if it is defined by visibility, become famous. The route may become secondary because the visible result is all that society has chosen to measure.

Money, business success and positional leadership are not bad measures. They are real evidence that a person may be doing something well. Building a valuable company requires insight, discipline, courage and execution. Leading a large institution requires capability. Wealth can represent years of risk, sacrifice and service to customers.

But the evidence is incomplete. We also need to ask: How was the wealth created? What problem did it solve? Who paid the hidden cost? Is the story credible? Is the person accountable? What happened to employees, customers, investors and communities along the way? Did the person’s rise strengthen society or teach everybody that the rules do not matter?

Wealth tells us that value was captured. It does not automatically tell us how much value was created, whether it was created honestly or whether society became better as a result.

Every celebration teaches

People often think culture is created through speeches about values. Culture is created more powerfully through rewards.

A school can teach integrity in the classroom, but if students see that the most celebrated adults acquired their wealth through unexplained access to public resources, the ceremony teaches more loudly than the lesson. A country can ask young people to work hard, but if political connections repeatedly outperform competence, young people learn that proximity to power is the real career strategy. A church can preach character, but if it gives its most prominent seats to wealthy people without caring how the wealth was made, it teaches that money can purchase moral credibility.

This is why our definition of success places a ceiling on society. People adapt to whatever wins.

When honest entrepreneurs are respected, more people are encouraged to build. When researchers who solve important problems are celebrated, intellectual work becomes more desirable. When public officials who improve schools, health and safety become our examples of leadership, office begins to look like service rather than access to wealth. When people who mentor others and build enduring institutions are honoured, success becomes something that multiplies beyond one person’s lifestyle.

The reverse is also true. If we celebrate the mansion without asking about the business, the convoy without asking about the public record and the title without asking about the outcome, we should not be surprised when people pursue symbols rather than substance. Society receives more of whatever it rewards with status.

Wealth requires a provenance

When we look at an expensive work of art, its provenance matters. We want to know where it came from, who owned it and whether the story is authentic. Wealth should also have a provenance.

This is not an argument that every wealthy person is suspicious or that success requires a public explanation of every private detail. It is an argument that public honour should require a higher standard than public appearance.

A credible wealth story should make basic sense. There should be an identifiable source of value: a company built, assets acquired, products sold, investments made, expertise applied or an inheritance lawfully received. Where the individual has held public office, the need for transparency becomes greater because public power and private enrichment can intersect.

We should be able to distinguish between an entrepreneur who became wealthy by serving millions of customers and a person who became wealthy by diverting resources intended for those same customers. Both may have money. They do not represent the same kind of success.

The method matters because methods reproduce themselves. A legitimate business can train employees, develop suppliers, pay taxes, improve technology and inspire new founders. Illicit enrichment weakens institutions, teaches cynicism and redirects ambitious people away from creation and towards capture.

In The Tyranny of Merit, Michael Sandel questions the moral conclusions societies draw from economic success. Markets can reward scarcity, bargaining power and circumstance; they do not issue a complete moral verdict on a person’s contribution. Somebody may earn a great deal without producing proportionate social value, while a teacher, nurse or public-health worker creates enormous value that the market does not fully price. Money is a useful measure; it is not an all-knowing judge.

Reputation can be laundered through association

Branding is about relevance, and relevance is often built through association. This creates a responsibility that many respected institutions underestimate.

An established university, religious body, media platform, professional association, international conference or charitable foundation already possesses trust. When it honours somebody, gives them a prominent platform or repeatedly presents them as an example, part of that institutional credibility transfers to the individual.

The audience reasons that the institution must have conducted its checks. If this person is welcomed here, perhaps the stories about them cannot be serious. If respected leaders take photographs with them, perhaps their success must be legitimate. Through repeated association, social acceptance can arrive before accountability.

This is reputation laundering; it does not always happen intentionally. Institutions need sponsors. Conferences need speakers. Media organisations need compelling personalities. Charities need donors. Yet financial support or public popularity should not purchase borrowed integrity.

Trusted institutions must ask what exactly they are endorsing. Is the person being recognised for a specific, verified achievement, or is the institution validating the person’s entire public identity? What due diligence was conducted? Are allegations material and credible? Is there an explanation of how the selection was made? Would the institution extend the same honour if the individual had less money or influence?

There is also a responsibility to use precise language. A person can be a commercially successful founder without being described as a moral example. A politician can deliver one valuable project without being declared a transformational leader. We can recognise a particular contribution without converting it into a certificate of complete virtue.

Public honour is an institutional asset. It should be allocated with the same seriousness as capital.

Contribution must become visible

If wealth and position are insufficient, what should success mean? I believe success should include a person’s measurable contribution to making society a better place to live. The word “measurable” matters because good intentions are easy to announce. Outcomes require discipline.

If somebody says education is important, how many people were supported? More importantly, what happened to them? Did students complete their programmes? Did they learn? Did they find work, build companies, conduct research or serve their communities? A photograph of scholarship recipients is evidence that money was disbursed; it is not yet evidence that lives changed.

If a leader says they support entrepreneurship, how many founders did they mentor, fund or connect? How many of those companies survived? How many jobs did they create? How much capital did the entrepreneurs later raise? Did the programme build independent leaders, or did it build an audience permanently dependent on the sponsor?

If a business claims community impact, did household income rise? Did suppliers become stronger? Did workers develop transferable skills? Did the company reduce harm, pay obligations and leave the community with an institution that can last?

If a politician claims success, the question is not how many projects were commissioned but what outcomes improved. Did maternal mortality decline? Did children learn more? Did travel time fall? Did electricity become more reliable? Did citizens become safer? What was the cost, what was the baseline and did the improvement endure?

The OECD’s evaluation framework uses six helpful criteria: relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. These ideas are useful far beyond development programmes. They force us to ask whether an intervention addressed the right problem, achieved its objective, used resources responsibly, produced wider effects and can continue.

Activity is not outcome. Generosity is not automatically transformation. Publicity is not proof.

We must measure without becoming simplistic

Insisting on outcomes creates another danger: measuring only what is easy to count.

Human contribution is not reducible to one number. A mentor may change the direction of a person’s life through a conversation that never appears in a report. A parent may raise children of integrity without creating a foundation. A community leader may prevent conflict, build trust or care for vulnerable people in ways that are real but difficult to quantify.

So measurable contribution should not mean that every act requires a dashboard. It means that claims should be proportionate to evidence. If somebody claims to have transformed education across a state, enrolment, learning, completion and opportunity should show it. If somebody quietly helped ten people become capable, independent adults, testimony and their lives may be the appropriate evidence.

We should combine quantitative and qualitative proof. Numbers reveal scale and patterns. Stories reveal depth, context and human experience. Both can be manipulated, so both require scrutiny.

We must also think about attribution. A billionaire may donate to a successful school, but the teachers, families, government and students also created the outcome. A governor may take credit for economic growth that came partly from national policy or commodity prices. A founder may receive all the praise for work performed by thousands of employees. Mature success acknowledges the system of contribution rather than claiming every result for one individual.

And we need a counterfactual question: what would likely have happened without this person’s action? A programme that serves people is good, but its additional contribution may be smaller than the headline suggests if another functioning system already provided the same service. Good evaluation protects society from confusing visibility with causation.

A richer definition of prosperity

Countries themselves have confronted this measurement problem. Gross domestic product tells us a great deal about economic production, but it does not tell us everything about whether people are flourishing.

The United Nations Development Programme says that human development concerns “the richness of human life,” not merely the richness of the economy. Its Human Development approach considers people’s capabilities and choices, including health, education and living standards. The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s work on multidimensional poverty similarly recognises that deprivation can involve overlapping disadvantages rather than income alone.

This does not make economic growth unimportant. Africa needs much more productive capacity, investment, employment and wealth creation. Poverty cannot be solved by redefining success so poetically that we stop building businesses. Money funds hospitals, infrastructure, research, education and strong institutions. Growth matters.

But growth should serve human flourishing. A society can become wealthier while remaining unsafe, unequal or institutionally weak. A country can build impressive infrastructure while citizens lack freedom and accountability. A successful society must be capable of producing wealth and converting it into healthier, more educated, secure and empowered human beings.

The same applies to an individual. Personal wealth matters, but what did the wealth enable? Did it create freedom only for its owner, or did it build capability around them? Did the person’s success leave behind stronger people and institutions?

Leadership must be judged by what remains

Positional leadership is one of the easiest forms of success to misread. A title tells us that somebody occupies an office. It does not tell us whether they lead well.

The real evidence appears in what changes because the leader was there and what remains after the leader leaves. Are decisions more disciplined? Are systems more transparent? Did capable people grow? Does the institution function without constant personal intervention? Were resources multiplied? Was trust strengthened?

This is why I appreciate the standard implied by the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. Its criteria go beyond merely having been president: a candidate must have been democratically elected, served the constitutionally mandated term, left office and demonstrated exceptional leadership. The prize is not required to produce a winner every year. That willingness to leave the award unclaimed is itself a statement that prestige should not be distributed merely because a ceremony is expected.

Our societies need more institutions willing to say, “No candidate met the standard.” An empty stage can sometimes teach a stronger lesson than a compromised award.

We should apply the same seriousness to business leadership. Revenue growth matters. Profitability matters. Valuation matters. But so do customer trust, employee development, governance, taxes, product safety and the durability of the enterprise. A founder who raises a great deal of capital and creates a fashionable brand has achieved something, but the final story depends on what was built with the capital and what happened to the people who trusted the company. Success should survive due diligence.

What should we teach the next generation to admire?

I want young Africans to be ambitious. I want them to build billion-dollar and hundred-billion-dollar companies. I want them to lead institutions, develop technology, create wealth and compete globally. Small ambition will not build the Africa we need.

But I also want them to understand that the size of an achievement does not remove the obligation to explain its source or consequences. We should teach them to admire wealth with integrity, power with accountability, brilliance with service and influence with responsibility.

A healthier social definition of success might ask five questions. What did you build? This concerns capability, enterprise and creation.

How did you build it? This concerns integrity, transparency and the treatment of people.

Who became better because it existed? This concerns customers, employees, communities and future leaders.

What measurable outcomes changed? This separates intention and activity from impact. What will remain when you are gone? This tests whether success became an institution or remained a personality.

No life will answer every question perfectly. Success is not moral perfection, and contribution does not require fame. But these questions produce a better aspiration than money alone.

My faith also makes the distinction unavoidable. Jesus asked what it profits a person to gain the whole world and lose their soul. That is not an argument against achievement. It is a warning that acquisition can become a terrible exchange when it costs the part of us that gives achievement meaning.

Raise the standard of celebration

Society will always need symbols of possibility. People need to see that difficult things can be built and that excellence is rewarded. The answer is not to stop celebrating successful people. It is to celebrate more intelligently.

Ask for the story behind the result. Distinguish evidence from image. Verify claims. Follow the outcomes over time. Honour the people who built the system, not only the person whose name appears on it. Withdraw credibility when serious facts contradict the story. Give equal visibility to creators whose work changes lives even when their lifestyles are not spectacular.

Most importantly, respected institutions must understand that association is not neutral. Every award, invitation, photograph, endorsement and honorary title communicates a judgment. Institutions should not lend their credibility more cheaply than banks lend money.

A society cannot become more honourable than the conduct it honours. It cannot become more productive than the achievement it rewards. It cannot become more accountable than the stories it refuses to examine.

If we define success as visible wealth without provenance, we will produce people who seek visible wealth at any cost. If we define it as power without service, we will produce leaders who pursue office for themselves. If we define it as contribution, integrity and enduring human outcomes, we will direct ambition towards building society.

I want Africa to create extraordinary wealth. But I want the evidence of our success to be larger than the bank accounts of a few individuals. It should be visible in the quality of our schools, the strength of our institutions, the entrepreneurs we raise, the dignity of work, the trust in our communities and the number of people who can build meaningful lives.

That is not a rejection of success. It is a definition large enough for a continent to grow into.