On the heels of Barak Obama winning the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, it seems to be unusual that the most valuable individual annual award in the world is not being given this year. The Mo Ibrahim Prize consists of US$5million over 10 years and US$200,000 annually for life thereafter. It is the largest annually awarded prize in the world. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is committed to supporting great African leadership that will improve the economic and social prospects of the people of Africa, but this year, that leadership could not be found. That’s right; The Mo Ibrahim award was withheld this year. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki and Ghana’s John Kufuor had been the favorites.
You may be wondering, as many African’s are as well, if the financial crises is the culprit behind this move on the part of the Foundation. According to Atlas’s friends on the ground, some people are saying (in anger) that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is broke and wants to save money. Not surprisingly, many people would rather blame a broke foundation than acknowledge that good leadership in Africa is rare.
IMANI Center for Policy & Education’s Kofi Bentil and Franklin Cudjoe described to me their thoughts on their former president being led on, and then passed over for this robust prize.
While John Kufuor was on many accounts a good president in Ghana, he made some clear mistakes toward the end of his presidency. Apparently he allocated presidential property (cars, etc.) to himself and took over some public facilities for his private use.
Mr. Bentil stated, “I believe he expected his party to win and therefore the new president will allow him to keep the loot. Unfortunately for him the opposition won, and upon discovering this, they created huge furor which brought his reputation down significantly. He made a rod for his own back!”
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s credibility would possibly be hurt if it overlooked these clear blunders.
Regarding the incentives for African leadership following this decision, Mr. Bentil believes that “[the decision] sends the message that the bar for excellence is high and will not be lowered to fit ‘African’ standards.”
According to “Ghana’s most irreverent journalist”, Ato Kwamena Dadzie, “In snubbing Kufuor, Mo Ibrahim and his committee are signaling to all Africans that the time has come for us to stop settling for the sort of leadership which only offers tokens. We need transformational leadership; leaders who take a bad situation and turn it completely around. We need leaders who think beyond the next election, those who will take the tough, unpleasant decisions that will take this continent out of the cycle of backwardness, poverty and disease. They are the ones who deserve to be honored – not the likes of Kufuor and Obasanjo. Mo Ibrahim has set the bar of leadership very high and Africa will be all the better for it. We should give him a prize for that.”
Previous prize laureates include Joaquim Alberto Chissano and Festus Gontebanye Mogae. Mogao served as the third President of Botswana between 1998 and 2008. He first became President in April 1998 as the leader of the Botswana Democratic Party and won a second term in 2004. Chissano served as the second Head of State of Mozambique from November 1986 to February 2005. He was elected President in October 1994 in the country’s first multiparty elections, and then again in December 1999. He stepped down from the Presidency in 2004 without seeking the third term that the constitution allowed.
Nelson Mandela is an honorary 2007 laureate.
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