Motswana among Mo Ibrahim award nominees
Staff Writer | Wednesday July 5, 2017 16:59
Segole is scheduled to join the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The other two are Robtel Neajai Pailey (Liberia) who will join the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Oulimata Fall (Senegal) who will join International Trade Centre (ITC).
The programme is designed to mentor future African leaders.
The candidates, chosen from amongst a pool of over 2,000 applicants, will take up posts in these three multinational organisations and benefit from direct mentorship of their current leaders.
Mo Ibrahim congratulated the new Ibrahim Leadership Fellows saying, “With leadership in Africa as one of the focus areas of the Foundation, the programme provides a platform to cultivate a community of individuals who will rise to become Africa’s future inspirational leaders.”
He added: “The three will join a network of fellows who share a commitment to making a positive impact on the continent, contributing their skills and learning for a better Africa”.
The 2017 Ibrahim Fellows:
Segole joins UNECA. She is a public sector economist with extensive experience spanning nine years in development and economic planning serving the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development at a district level.
In this capacity, she coordinated district economic development activities, managed government projects of all magnitudes, carried out feasibility studies to determine project viability and undertook contingency planning and implementation.
Pailey will join AFDB. She is a Liberian academic, activist and author of the anti-corruption children’s book, Gbagba. With over a decade of combined professional experiences in Africa, Europe and North America, she has worked across a broad range of fields supporting governments, universities, NGOs, media institutions, regional and multilateral organisations.
Previously a Mo Ibrahim Foundation PhD Scholar at SOAS, University of London, Robtel is completing post-doctoral research at the University of Oxford documenting the socio-economic development implications of crisis-induced return migration to Cameroon, Chad, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Liberia and Niger.
Fall has joined ITC. She comes from the Senegalese Export Promotion Agency where she worked as the Head of Trade Promotion and Economic Intelligence Department. She has successfully implemented aid-for-trade projects in order to sustainably connect Senegalese SMEs to international markets.
Over the past 10 years, Oulimata was in charge of export development and promotion of agriculture, seafood, handcrafts and textiles “Made in Senegal” products.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation has described former President Sir Ketumile Masire as a humble leader whose qualities are rare in the African continent. He was speaking at the memorial service for the departed statesman recently.
“I am a commoner just like many Africans, I don’t represent any government here, but I felt the urge to speak about this great man,” he said. He described Masire as a great symbol of good governance, decency and good leadership, whose qualities the African continent needs urgently. He said the current crop of leaders in the continent was more interested in enriching themselves than taking their countries forward.
Mo Ibrahim stated that he had been working with Masire for the last 18 years on issues of governance and leadership in the African continent and their relationship was a very good one as he has managed to learn a lot from him. He said Masire possessed the qualities that can best be described as humility, humble and selfless.
He reminisced an incident when Masire refused to fly on Business Class in favour of Economy class and when quizzed by other leaders he simply said his country was unique from others in the continent and therefore he preferred Economy Class.
“We are going to miss his leadership skills, which are scarce in this continent,” Mo Ibrahim said. The application process for the 2018 Ibrahim Fellowships Programme will open on August 14, 2017.