An Honest Payoff

Sudanese-Egyptian telecommunications magnate Mo Ibrahim is offering one
African leader each year the chance to retire rich — but only if he or she
has been honest while in power

It is very unlikely that Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, re-elected in
October to a third term with a 67% majority, will ever win the Mo Ibrahim
Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. After all, he is a
stereotypical African “big man” ruler, which is precisely what the prize
seeks to eliminate.



Jammeh first came to power in a military coup 12 years ago. He has won
three terms in more or less free elections on the strength of his lavish
spending (of borrowed money) and his control of the police (who wore “Vote
Jammeh” badges at his election rallies ). He is not a monster, and his
small West African country has escaped the horrors that devastated other
countries in the region. But you would definitely not trust him with the
rent money


Mo (short for Mohammed) Ibrahim is a very different sort of person. When I
first met him in 2004, I thought he had a very good idea — and practically
no chance of turning it into reality. Money, however, opens many doors:
Last month in London, he launched a prize so rich that it puts the Nobel
Peace Prize in the shade.


To qualify for the Mo Ibrahim Prize, you have be a democratically elected
African ruler who handed over power peacefully to a similarly elected
successor, and you must have done good things for the country while you
had power. The prize is worth $5 million in the first ten years, and more
if the ex-leader enjoys a very long retirement.


Mo Ibrahim was born 60 years ago in Sudan, grew up in Egypt, and moved to
Britain in 1975 to study telecommunications. In 1989, he set up Mobile
Systems International (MSI), which he sold to Marconi in 2000 for $900
million. Then he created Celtel to bring mobile phones to all the
countries in Africa.


They all thought he was mad, because everybody knows that Africans don’t
have any money. But being poor doesn’t make you stupid, and Africans
quickly realized that mobile phones are an investment that pays: If you
are a fisherman, or a farmer, or a herdsman, or a market trader, this is
how you find out where today’s best prices are. Between 1999 and 2004,
mobile phone users in Africa grew tenfold, from 7.5 million to 77 million
(out of a total population of 800 million) — and Mo Ibrahim got a lot
richer.


Last year, Kuwait’s MTC (which bid unsuccessfully for Egypt’s third mobile
license earlier this year) bought Celtel for $3.4 billion, and Mo Ibrahim
started looking for something useful to do with his money. Most Africans
would agree that bad governments are one of their continent’s biggest
problems, so what might be done to encourage powerful people in Africa to
behave better?


He focused on just one key aspect of the problem: African presidents and
prime ministers cannot afford to quit. Most of them are paid less than
taxi drivers in New York, London or Tokyo, and politically it cannot be
otherwise, because their voters make 20 times less than that. So long as
they are in office, they are well looked after — but most of them must
either steal enough to retire on or stay in office until they die.


Mo Ibrahim’s solution — and he would admit that it is only partial — is
the Prize. As things stand now, if an African leader is legitimately
elected, serves honorably, and quits when his time is up, he faces ruin.


“Suddenly, all the mansions, cars, food, wine is withdrawn,” Mo says.
“Some find it difficult to rent a house in the capital. That incites
corruption; it incites people to cling to power. The Prize will offer
essentially good people, who may be wavering, the chance to opt for the
good life after office.”


The Prize, for which only retiring African presidents and prime ministers
are eligible, is $500,000 a year for ten years for their personal use,
plus an additional $200,000 a year to give to charity. That deal ends
after the first decade of retirement, but the ex-leaders continue to get
$200,000 a year until they die. Some may call it cynical; Mo Ibrahim
prefers to call it pragmatic.


To help choose the winners, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is creating an index
of good governance. It will be similar to Transparency International’s
corruption index, but it will measure how well African leaders deliver
security, health, education and economic development to their people and
how well they respect human rights and democratic processes. The index
will be produced annually by an independent team based at Harvard
University, and it may actually be the most important component of the
project.


Almost half of Africa’s 53 heads of state have been in power for more than
ten years, and 15 of them have been in power for over 15 years. At most,
the Mo Ibrahim Prize can persuade only one of them each year to retire.
But if the index by which the lucky one is chosen becomes a widely
accepted measure of the quality of governance in Africa, it will become an
immensely useful tool in the hands of a younger generation of Africans who
desperately want to break with the “big man” traditions of the first
generation of post-colonial leaders.


That’s undoubtedly what Mo Ibrahim really has in mind.

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