The term "new generation" or "new breed" of African leaders was a buzzword that was widely used in the mid-to-late 1990s to express optimism in a new generation of African leadership. It has since fallen out of favour, along with several of the leaders for which the term was used. Description In the 1980s and 1990s, increasingly-many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa were holding multiparty elections. The Cold War, the proxy wars of the United States and Soviet Union, as well as apartheid in South Africa, had come to an end. A new generation of African leaders had been anointed who promised to transform their continent. The dream was dubbed the African Renaissance. The concept is often defined in contrast to the big man syndrome, the autocratic rule by the so-called "big men" of African politics during the first two decades after independence. When US President Bill Clinton made his African journey in March 1998, he helped popularize this notion when he said he placed hope in a "new generation of African leaders" devoted to democracy and economic reforms. Although Clinton did not identify the African leaders by name, it is generally assumed that he was referring to, among others, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea. Other leaders were later added that list, including Ghana's Jerry Rawlings, Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano and South Africa's Thabo Mbeki. In contrast, the champions of African independence in the 1960s, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Robert Mugabe, and occasionally the diasporan Pan-Africanists W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey are sometimes called "the old generation of African leaders" (in the 1960s they were also called "new generation of nationalist leaders", "new generation of Pan-Africanists" and ironically "new generation of African leaders"). Criticism With the outbreak of the Second Congo War and the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, many of the "new generation of African leaders" warred against one another, and optimism was lost. Furthermore, many of the leaders failed to deliver adequate democracy, peace, and development and had an inclination to cling to power. In 2010, the Ghanaian economist George Ayittey characterized the "new and angry generation of young African graduates and professionals" as the "Cheetah Generation", which could look at Africa's problems from a fresh perspective, apart from the failed governmental policies of the "Hippo Generation" of leaders, which