@writersroom.boardwalkTwenty names, one ranking, and a whole lot of opinion baked in. The rundown runs Nelson Mandela of South Africa at 1, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana at 2, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania at 3, Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 4, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso at 5, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia at 6. From there Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya takes 7, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal 8, Kofi Annan of Ghana 9, Wangari Maathai of Kenya 10, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia 11, Desmond Tutu of South Africa 12, Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau / Cape Verde 13, Samora Machel of Mozambique 14. Rounding it out: Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia 15, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt 16, Paul Kagame of Rwanda 17, Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia 18, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe 19, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya 20. Credit for the sourcing goes to the African Union, the Nobel Prize, the UN and Britannica among other web sources. Whether the order holds up is another conversation entirely.

@writersroom.boardwalkTwenty names, one ranking, and a whole lot of opinion baked in. The rundown runs Nelson Mandela of South Africa at 1, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana at 2, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania at 3, Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 4, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso at 5, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia at 6. From there Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya takes 7, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal 8, Kofi Annan of Ghana 9, Wangari Maathai of Kenya 10, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia 11, Desmond Tutu of South Africa 12, Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau / Cape Verde 13, Samora Machel of Mozambique 14. Rounding it out: Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia 15, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt 16, Paul Kagame of Rwanda 17, Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia 18, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe 19, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya 20. Credit for the sourcing goes to the African Union, the Nobel Prize, the UN and Britannica among other web sources. Whether the order holds up is another conversation entirely.