Mo Ibrahim is in my African Hall of Fame! Mo Rocks!
The famed entrepreneur was interviewed in the Financial Times in February mostly about his Foundation which is passionate about governance, accountability and leadership across the continent.
The article states
African leaders, Ibrahim continues, look to retirement as they would to the edge of a cliff, beyond which lies a dizzying fall towards retribution and relative poverty.
“We don’t have financial institutions for ex-presidents to go and run, or boards of great companies. There is life after office in other parts of the world. I just read that Tony Blair was paid half a million pounds to make a speech in China. People like Blair always have a place in society, they have secure financial futures,” he says.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is famed for the African Leadership challenge. Every year he is offering $5m of his own money to an African leader who is judged to have ruled fairly and resigned, with grace, to an elected successor. Joachim Chissano, who led Mozambique out of civil war and through a decade of economic recovery before stepping down is the first to have received this prize. One can only hope that others follow.
As the dialogue continues later this year in the TED Africa conference on moving Africa forward this prize should serve as an incentive for good leadership. The nay sayers could point however to the fact that corruption by various leaders who have left power leaves them with financial investments as the least of their worries.
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