Towards a new African leadership

MO IBRAHIM | Thursday June 17, 2010 00:00

As the publication has been gracious enough to admit, it was wrong.  Many things have been extremely hopeful in Africa over the last decade. Growth has outpaced the rest of the world.  World beating businesses have emerged and, given Africa's rich natural resources, financiers are finally starting to wake up to the investment potential of the continent.

The geniuses in investment banks who used arrogantly to deride the risks of investment in Africa while pouring billions into phoney derivatives based on the American housing bubble have been proven to be as spectacularly wrong on Africa as they were on everything else.

Yet the concern about how well African countries are governed is real and remains. It was to promote excellent leadership and good governance that I established the Ibrahim Prize a few years ago.  With the funds accumulated from investing in mobile telephony in Africa, my foundation was able to award the biggest annual prize in the world - worth $5million over 10 years to former African leaders who have governed well, respected their constitution, and left office leaving their country in better shape than they found it at their arrival.

The first two years we had two winners - Joaquim Chissano, Former President of Mozambique and Festus Mogae, Former President of Botswana. Little-known outside Africa, both have been outstanding statesmen and both have been worthy winners. By recognising and celebrating their leadership, the Foundation was able to show that the cartoon image of African leaders was out-of-date.  This year, like last year, the Prize Committee - chaired by Kofi Annan and independent of the Board - has not awarded the prize.  So does that mean that African leadership, as the Economist might say, is hopeless?

And has the Foundation established to celebrate good leadership in Africa ended up proving that good leadership does not exist in Africa?

No. Whether there is a winner of the prize or not, the purpose of the Foundation is to challenge those in Africa and across the world to debate what constitutes excellence in leadership. The standards set for the Prize winner are high, and the number of eligible candidates each year is small. So it is always likely that there will be years when no Prize is awarded.

 Many African countries are making great strides not just economically, but also in terms of their governance. In addition to the Prize, the Foundation publishes annually a rigorously researched index of performance of African countries. It is meant to equip citizens with as much information as possible about how their country is governed and how it compares to others. It shows that there is a wide degree of variation in governance, but overall there have been considerable improvements in the last few years. Prize or no prize, Africa is being governed better.

The Foundation is anything but complacent about the standards of governance in Africa. It is clear that much more needs to be done. It is for that reason that the Foundation has decided to use the funds that would have been spent on the prize this year for a complementary initiative to promote good governance.

We are initiating the Ibrahim Leadership Fellowships, a selective programme designed to identify and prepare the next generation of outstanding African leaders by providing them with mentoring opportunities in key multilateral institutions. 

The programme will seek to identify talented professionals each year to serve in leading institutions whose objective to improve the economic and social prospects of the people of Africa.  Our expectation is that Fellows will benefit from such exposure and go on to play leading roles in the governance of their countries.

The task of promoting good African leadership is more important than ever. Good governance will be crucial if African people are to share in the strong economic growth that many are predicting for Africa.Because far from being hopeless, Africa is full of hope and full of potential, maybe more so than any other continent nowadays. The challenge is to ensure that its potential is effectively utilised.

We will aim to play a part in that by equipping the African people with the information they need to assess the performance of their political leaders, by rewarding outstanding leadership, and by helping to equip some of the brightest and best with the skills they need to allow African countries to meet the expectations of their people. That is the real prize in the Hopeful Continent, which the foundation is focused on.

*Mo Ibrahim is founder and Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundationwww.moibrahimfoundation.org