In 1985, scientists reported a hole emerging in the ozone layer above Antarctica. Chemicals used in refrigeration, aerosols, and industrial processes were damaging the atmospheric layer that protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation.

More exposure meant higher risks of skin cancer and cataracts, damage to crops and ecosystems, and a threat that no country could contain within its own borders. The Antarctic ozone hole made the danger visible. However no country could protect its people while the chemicals causing it continued to be produced and used elsewhere. The ozone problem was global in the most literal sense.

Subscribe now

In 2026, leadership demonstrates the ability to produce wins within borders, within existing markets, and within established business models.

It is rarer for leaders to have the ability to see the wider system: to recognise when the greatest opportunity lies beyond competing more effectively within existing constraints - in changing the conditions that create risk, value, and possibility across them.

AI adoption is a technology decision. It also is a decision about who builds capability, who controls critical infrastructure, who captures the data, and who carries the risk when dependence becomes strategic. That is why a global view is a practical way to see the consequences a local decision can set in motion.

Mark-Alexandre Doumba’s article, Technological Leapfrogging in the AI Age, illustrates this. Writing about African economies, he argues that imported AI systems may create immediate gains, but can also deepen dependence when they substitute for local infrastructure, talent, institutional knowledge, and the capacity to adapt or replace what has been bought.

The important consideration in the AI age is: does adoption expand a country’s ability to create value and retain agency over time?

We have seen this kind of leadership at pivotal moments in history.

Share

In response to ozone depletion, the Montreal Protocol was born. The chemicals responsible were used across economies, their atmospheric effects crossed borders, and unilateral action risked simply production elsewhere. The agreement created a shared framework for science, commitments, finance, technology transfer, and verification. It did not require countries to abandon their interests. It made it possible to pursue those interests - in public health, industrial transition, competitiveness, and long-term security - through cooperation, rather than by moving the problem somewhere else.

That is the current leadership test. We can see that many current leaders will fail it.

The start is for leaders, current or aspiring, to see how a decision that makes sense locally can create risks for others. Then, they build the infrastructure, financing, partnerships, and public support that make cooperation possible - and worth it.

Leave a comment

Soft Power, Hard Problems with Sophie Krantz

Wins Within Borders Can Jeopardise Bigger…