The Illusion of Progress

In a world shaped by systems, progress is rarely accidental. It requires intention, structure, and a shared sense of purpose. Yet, across many parts of the developing world — and especially within nations like ours — a different pattern is emerging. One where movement is mistaken for progress, and visibility is confused with impact.

Everywhere you look, something seems to be happening. Meetings. Strategies. Panels. Initiatives. Announcements. New offices. Digital free zones. Startup accelerators.

There’s noise.

There’s motion.

There’s the performance of action.

But look closer, and the cracks begin to show.

Institutions that operate in silos. Leaders who trade long-term vision for short-term optics. Roles that exist more in title than in function. Agencies that overlap, initiatives that duplicate, and decisions that contradict.

It’s a system moving in multiple directions — but ultimately going nowhere.

We’re looking at a deeper dysfunction: where the very mechanisms meant to drive progress have become self-referencing loops, structures are built for appearances rather than outcomes and the system prioritizes maintenance of power over pursuit of purpose.

This article explores that dysfunction.

It’s a sober look at how our institutions, policies, and collective behaviors are unintentionally (and sometimes knowingly) sustaining a system of stagnation — all while appearing to be on the move.

Broken Chords: Why the Pieces Don’t Play Together

There’s something haunting about a system that looks complete — the buildings are there, the officials show up to work, the agencies exist on paper — and yet, nothing works together.

Imagine an orchestra where every musician plays a different song, at their own tempo, without a conductor, and no one sees anything wrong with it. That’s the state of many institutions today. Not just misaligned — fundamentally disjointed. Ministries, departments, agencies, parastatals — all operating in isolation, each chasing its own version of success, often at odds with the others.

It’s fragmentation at scale.

One arm might be launching a youth innovation programme, while another is busy designing regulatory constraints that make it near-impossible for that same programme to scale. One department is sending delegations abroad to attract investment, while another is quietly introducing policy bottlenecks that will discourage even the most optimistic investor.

It’s not that there’s no activity. There’s plenty of activity.

But activity without cohesion is noise.

And noise — no matter how well-funded — is not music.

This fragmentation creates a dangerous illusion: that the system is “busy,” that work is being done.

But busyness, in the absence of synergy, creates waste where there should be progress.

What we’re seeing is a machine where each gear spins independently, unaware that it’s supposed to move something together.

Worse still, the institutions that are supposed to coordinate this machinery often remain silent — paralyzed by indecision, or worse, unaware of their actual purpose beyond the ceremonial.

A repulsive lack of architectural thinking.

No blueprint. No integration. No central nervous system.

So we end up with an ecosystem that looks operational from the outside — complete with job titles, websites, and press briefings — but internally, it’s as incoherent as a choir with no song.

And perhaps the most dangerous part is how no one seems to notice.

When Purpose Is Replaced by Process

In functional systems, purpose drives process.

In dysfunctional ones, process becomes the purpose.

When people no longer understand why their institution exists — when the true mission is lost or never taught — they begin to treat procedure as success. Attendance becomes output. Paperwork becomes productivity. Conferences become legacy.

In too many public offices, the actual work has been replaced by a kind of ritual theatre — meetings held for their own sake, reports written with no audience in mind, committees formed to decide nothing. The goal isn’t transformation, it’s maintenance — of relevance, of position, of perception.

Like the plot of a long-running sitcom, the show must go on, even if the script has run out.

This isn’t to say these individuals are all malicious or lazy. In many cases, they are simply mirroring what they saw. They grew up watching systems where status was maintained not through results, but through activity signals — being seen, being heard, being associated. The point isn’t to fix a problem — the point is to show up often enough to appear useful.

So we get a revolving carousel of panel discussions, roundtables, “fireside chats,” and high-level stakeholder forums. All very polished, all very professional — until you look under the hood and realize nothing is actually being built. No frameworks refined, no pipelines cleared, no real structural change initiated. Just motion without momentum.

The system rewards those who stay visible, not those who stay useful.

And in such a system, the performers rise — while the builders burn out or back away.

When this becomes the culture, a dangerous feedback loop forms:

Purpose becomes diluted.
Process becomes king.
Performance becomes survival.
And eventually, people forget there was ever supposed to be more.

You’re left with institutions where the chairs are filled, the minutes are taken, the lights stay on — and yet the public wonders, with quiet frustration: what do these offices actually do?

And the answer, too often, is: whatever keeps them funded.

The Office: Governance as Performance

There’s a reason The Office became such a universally resonant sitcom: it exaggerated a truth many of us already knew — that in some workspaces, the appearance of work has replaced the necessity of results.

You have teams with titles, departments with goals, and calendars filled with meetings. There’s chatter, friction, hierarchy, email threads. But underneath it all, a haunting emptiness: What are we actually doing here?

Now zoom out.

In far too many public institutions, this satire has become reality. Ministries operate not unlike Dunder Mifflin.

There’s a regional manager equivalent.

A layer of mid-level appointees trying to hold the line.

Assistants and aides and interns orbiting around them.

Everyone looks busy, and in many cases, they are — just not in ways that move the needle.

The tragedy here isn’t laziness — it’s misalignment. People are performing a version of governance handed down from habit, not rooted in strategy. They’re doing the job as it has always been done, not necessarily as it needs to be done today. The true north of their office — the “why” behind the role — is often fuzzy, if remembered at all.

And in that vacuum of clarity, survival instincts kick in:

Say just enough to be seen.
Avoid rocking the boat.
Make no irreversible decisions.
Attend the events. Smile for the camera.
Stay visible. Stay relevant. Stay in.
It’s bureaucracy as a kind of long-form improv.

This is not unique to any one country, but in places where institutional memory is weak and accountability is diffused, the consequences are amplified. The cost of inactivity isn’t just a delay — it’s a deficit of public trust.

When citizens can’t name a single tangible outcome from an entire ministry’s existence, skepticism turns into silent disengagement. Or worse, open disdain.

But the real danger of this sitcom-governance model isn’t what it lacks — it’s what it consumes:

It absorbs talent, burning out idealists who enter the system hoping to make a difference, only to find they are performers in a prewritten script.
It distracts the public, keeping everyone focused on personalities and politics, rather than policies and progress.
And it delays development, because a system busy entertaining itself rarely has time to evolve. In a country where so much hinges on institutional reform, allowing our ministries to become mirrors of The Office sets a dangerous precedent.

Governance cannot afford to be entertainment.

Not when there’s real work to be done.

Silos in the Storm

In a functioning ecosystem, systems talk to each other.

They collaborate, share data, eliminate duplication, and build toward a unified mission.

But in a fractured one, each organ begins to behave as if it is the whole body — forgetting that it was meant to serve a larger system.

This is the current state of many public agencies: institutional silos, operating in isolation, often with overlapping mandates, unclear boundaries, and zero inter-agency synergy.

Everyone is “doing something.”

But few are doing it together.

You might find one agency launching a digital skilling initiative while another one is developing a competing version, unaware of the first. Or a ministry unveiling an ambitious policy strategy while failing to consult the parastatals or technical bodies that would actually implement it.

Communication breakdowns become the default. Collaboration becomes accidental — or worse, political.

And behind the scenes, the root cause often comes down to this:

There is no real central operational oversight.

Yes, there are “supervisory” roles and coordinating offices in theory. But in practice, they are rarely empowered — or inclined — to enforce coherence.

In many cases, these supposed overseers are part of the problem, preferring to maintain peace among various factions rather than drive strategic unification. It’s risk-averse leadership at the top, mirrored by disoriented effort at the bottom.

What emerges is a jigsaw puzzle where each piece is working hard — but none of them fit together.

No shared dashboards.
No interoperable data.
No cross-institutional KPIs.
No systems thinking.

Just solo runners in a relay where no baton ever changes hands.

This silo mentality may feel manageable in the short term. But in moments of national crisis, rapid innovation, or global competition, its limitations become fatal.

The system cannot respond in real time because it is not a system at all — just a loose collection of buildings with logos.

Even well-meaning reforms suffer in this structure. A new AI strategy may be proposed — but who owns it? Who drives it? Who funds and tracks it?

And who ensures it doesn’t conflict with five other digital economy efforts running in parallel?

Until this issue of operational fragmentation is addressed, development efforts will continue to cancel each other out. Worse still, they may become political turf wars — where institutions spend more time negotiating jurisdiction than serving citizens.

True progress will require a shift from individual program launches to institutional orchestration. From ego-driven territory to mission-driven unity.

Because until the system begins to move as one, every bold headline will simply be a solo performance lost in the storm.

The Theatre of Power

In a healthy system, leadership is a function of stewardship — a responsibility to build, coordinate, and leave things better than you found them.

But in dysfunctional systems, leadership becomes something else entirely: a stage.

Public office is no longer about designing working systems.

It becomes a performance — of authority, of relevance, of legacy.

And like all good performances, the key metric isn’t impact.

It’s optics.

What we see today is a political and bureaucratic culture that places far more value on visibility than on value creation. Decisions are often driven not by what’s needed, but by what maintains balance: balance among internal factions, balance between regions, and above all, balance of power.

This is why many agencies avoid making bold or disruptive changes, even when those changes are necessary. Disruption means taking a side. It means pushing against inertia. It means risking backlash from entrenched interests. And for leaders whose primary goal is political survival — or simply career preservation — the safest path is almost always the path of least resistance.

So instead of confronting dysfunction, they learn to manage it.

They smooth over frictions with committees.
They sidestep accountability with audits.
They celebrate mediocrity with awards.
They institutionalize stagnation with rituals.

And what the public sees is a parade of policies and press releases, often disconnected from reality. Making Grand declarations of national AI goals, for example, while the country still runs on draft documents, outdated infrastructure, and institutional inertia.

This dissonance is not accidental. It’s a byproduct of incentives.

When leaders are rewarded for political continuity rather than public delivery, the system produces power brokers, not problem solvers.

And it shows.

You see it in the slow rollouts.

In the endlessly recycled roadmaps.

In the absence of follow-through.

In the vague promises to “empower youth” with no measurable pipelines, no robust skill-matching, no sustainable ecosystem design.

Instead of engineering environments where homegrown talent can thrive, the focus quietly shifts to preparing talent for export — training people to become global freelancers rather than local builders. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with international opportunity, doing so as a national strategy — without addressing the root causes of why people flee — only deepens the brain drain problem.

So the cycle continues:

People leave for better systems.
Systems fail due to lack of capacity.
Leaders blame lack of capacity and call for more training.
Training leads to more exports.
And nothing changes at the core.

What should be a mission to design resilience becomes a long-running episode of The Office — where everyone looks busy, the politics are passive-aggressive, and the real work gets lost in the day-to-day theater.

Until we break this loop — until we realign incentives around real, measurable outcomes instead of optics — we’ll remain stuck in this performance economy.

And the cost of the ticket is national progress.

Policies Without Ground

Every policy carries with it a set of assumptions — about who it serves, how it works, and what it’s meant to solve.

In well-functioning systems, those assumptions are tested, challenged, and refined through data, feedback, and iteration.

In dysfunctional systems, those assumptions are rarely tested — because the policy itself is not the point. The announcement is.

We are living in a time when new initiatives are rolled out almost weekly — each one bearing the marks of ambition, yet few with the foundation of strategy. Public institutions chase headlines like startups chase seed rounds: fast, loud, and sometimes directionless.

Take, for example, the growing pattern of importing foreign frameworks wholesale — from innovation playbooks to education templates — with the hope that simply replicating external structures will produce internal transformation. The problem is: context doesn’t copy-paste.

You cannot build a future-ready talent economy by bypassing the present.

And yet, that’s precisely what many of these policies attempt to do.

On one hand, we see ministries trying to roll out programs aimed at building a “digital economy.”

On the other, these same programs are priced in a way that locks out the very people they claim to serve — the young entrepreneur, the local developer, the self-taught engineer.

There are initiatives that cost more to participate in than many small businesses make in a quarter. Fundamentally disconnected from local affordability and sustainability because they are designed to impress international partners or attract foreign capital.

It’s not hard to guess what happens next:

International players nod politely, but rarely invest.
Local actors shrug and find alternatives.
The policy becomes a slide deck.
The slide deck becomes a talking point.
And the talking point becomes proof of effort — without impact. This pattern is particularly evident in the rising culture of conferences, summits, fireside chats, and innovation meetups — scheduled almost daily across cities. These gatherings, while not inherently harmful, often substitute performance for progress.

Panels are filled. Venues are branded. Hashtags trend.

But the conversations rarely leave the room.
Ideas are applauded, but rarely incubated.
Problems are discussed, but rarely solved.
Experts speak, but outcomes are never tracked.

And through all this noise, a subtle illusion forms — one where it feels like something is happening simply because people are talking about it.

In truth, there’s an entire layer of policy theatre that operates independent of results — an ecosystem designed to signal seriousness without delivering solutions.

This creates a dangerous kind of placebo effect, giving the sense that action is being taken, while the underlying problems continue to fester.

Until we anchor policy in the realities of local ecosystems and design programs that are affordable, measurable, and built around user outcomes, we will continue producing initiatives with no ground to stand on.

And the longer we pretend that vision statements equal strategy, the further we drift from the kind of development that lasts.

The Cost of Pretending

When systems break, it’s not always with a bang.

More often, they wear down — gradually, invisibly — under the weight of unspoken truths, unacknowledged errors, and unresolved contradictions.

And for a long time, it all seems manageable.

You patch one thing. You shift another. You adjust expectations.

Until eventually, you’re left with a machine that makes noise, but produces nothing.

That’s the danger we face now:

A society so entangled in the performance of progress that it’s lost touch with the actual mechanics of change.

In such a system, roles exist, but rarely in full function.

Ministries exist, but often without the muscle of enforcement or the clarity of mission. Agencies make announcements, but fail to coordinate, align, or even acknowledge each other’s work.

And in this kind of siloed chaos, accountability dies quietly.

Because when everyone is partially responsible, no one is truly answerable.

Imagine trying to pilot a ship where the crew doesn’t agree on the direction, half the instruments are decorative, and the captain is mostly there for ceremonial appearances.

That’s what institutional dysfunction looks like.

And perhaps most dangerous of all: the longer we continue performing the rituals of governance without embracing the purpose behind them, the more we teach a new generation that this is what leadership looks like.

That strategy is just a slideshow.
That innovation is just a conference.
That leadership is just visibility.
That failure is just a communications problem. But that’s not how systems are built.

That’s not how countries grow.

To rebuild properly, we’ll have to confront an uncomfortable truth:

We are suffering from misdirected development. The resources exist, the people exist, but the architecture is wrong.

This isn’t just a political problem or a government problem — it’s a systems problem.

It affects how we educate, how we plan, how we collaborate, how we lead.

And most of all, how we measure success.

If we are to correct course, we will need more than policy.

We will need honest design — of roles, of incentives, of missions, and of institutions.

We will need to learn how to work together again.

Not just side by side.

But toward the same goal.

With clarity, alignment and purpose.

Until then, all we’ll have is the illusion of progress — a stage filled with actors, playing parts in a production that never quite moves forward.

And the longer the curtain stays up, the more it costs us all.