On the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s website (www.moibrahimfoundation.org) there is a defining quote by a great man. It speaks volumes: “Mo Ibrahim has a vision to promote and recognize good governance that will drive Africa’s political and economic renaissance.” — Nelson Mandela.

The man in question, Mo Ibrahim himself, sits next to me, quietly puffing on his fragrant pipe in the very noisy hotel lobby. As I study his gentle features, I find it difficult to believe that this unpretentious person is one of the richest telecommunications tycoons in the region and the driving force behind the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Ibrahim Index of African Governance and the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership.

The foundation was launched in October 2006, but the first prize was presented with a big bang here in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina last October, with Western and Arabic media covering the event. The prize, heralded as the largest prize in the world and the first of its kind, has been given the lion’s share of attention. Again, the website says it best: The prize “is awarded annually to a former African executive Head of State or Government who has demonstrated excellence in African leadership. Unprecedented in its scale and scope, the Mo Ibrahim Prize consists of $5 million over 10 years and $200,000 annually for life thereafter. A further $200,000 per year for good causes espoused by the winner may be granted by the Foundation during the first 10 years.”

The prize, awarded last year to former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano, is the first thing I congratulate Ibrahim upon, and I ask whether such a prize is meant as a tough statement against other leaders — you know, the corrupt sort. Ibrahim brushes off both the felicitation and the question. He is annoyed that the media has focused on the prize itself, which he believes is important, but not as important as the governance index, a scientific effort that should have been given more attention.

“Through the prize, we want to celebrate good governance and help political leaders,” Ibrahim says. “It is a problem for African leaders to have a life after office. It is difficult. There is a lack of resources, no banks for them to go and work on their boards, no big companies or all the things Western leaders enjoy.”

Although the foundation is barely less than two years old, the idea for it has occupied Ibrahim’s mind for a very long time. “I’ve been thinking about this for the past 10 years maybe, since I started working in Africa. It was obvious that something drastic needed to be done.

“I was quite bothered at first,” he recalls. “Africa never ceases to amaze me. This richness of means, immense fertility of the land, unlimited potential — that is absolutely true, so why are we hungry? What is this? We have all these resources and not that many people — 800 or 900 million — much less than India, which is one country. It has always been a question of mine: why are we poor, why do we have famine? The answer to me was clear, it is the issue of governance, or rather the lack of it.”

While Mandela’s quote touches on the dream, it is Ibrahim’s own words that welcome browsers to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation website: ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important for Africa than good governance.’

“Without good governance, we don’t expect to go forward at all,” Ibrahim elaborates. “If we don’t have respect for the law and for human rights, if we don’t have efficient economic planning or if we are not providing the right service to our people, of course we will not go forward; if we keep on having conflict and fighting along ethnic lines or religious lines. It became clear to me that something needed to be done to improve the level of governance in Africa.”

The question was what. From the first moment, the idea was to come up with a model that uniquely fits Africa. “We knew that it [the answer] cannot be imported,” he recalls. “You cannot expect someone to come and do it [for you]. Africa and Africans and African countries have to do it themselves.

“We thought the best we can do is to try and define governance, measure it, and give every society in each country the facts about the state of governance in their country. It is then up to the citizens of that country to do what they want to do, but let us shed some light on the issue. When you have information, you can have a sensible and objective idea of what’s really going on.”

The next question was how. “We set about to find the people with the most expertise in the field. We worked with Harvard’s Kennedy School of Governance. In order to get more credible data, we did not intend to reinvent the wheel. We get our data from the UN, the UNDP, the WHO, Freedom House, etc. We are collecting the most reliable data wherever we can find it. We try to fill in the gaps and try to produce comprehensive coverage. We published our first data set last year, which included data from years 2000 and 2002. This enables people to compare where each country was and where it is going. In total we tried to measure some 58 categories that fall under five major categories which measure and rank all countries against each other,” he says.

The five areas that make up the Ibrahim Index of Governance are: Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Development; and Human Development.

“We publish our findings in a user-friendly database on our site in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Swahili, which are the five languages of Africa,” Ibrahim explains. “It is done in such a way as to enable regular people, researchers, NGOs, government people, MPs, whoever, to access the data and to play with it, or to benchmark certain categories against others. With time, people will learn to use it more and more. We think that will be a very useful basis for discussion. We want to bring the issue of governance to the center of the table.”

What about the prize? “The idea is to appreciate the challenge the African leaders are facing,” he says. “It is a very tough job to run an African country when you have a very young population. Every year you need to provide many schools, health services and so on. You have people who suffer from AIDS and malaria, which are costly illnesses that go on for years. How do you deal with that? You need to build infrastructure from scratch. There is so much that needs to be done. You also need to maintain a liberal and democratic regime, to deal with strife or even tensions between different factions or groups. You have to deal with disputes.

“It is so easy to become corrupt. We thought if they (the leaders) manage to deal with all these challenges, the least we can do is support them.”

Another question remained for Ibrahim to answer, but it is of a different nature, one that concerns the Western mindset and the almost racist perceptions of the Dark Continent.

“The question I asked myself: Why is it that the Nobel prize, this wonderful prize, is given to scientists whose work helps humanity, while here we have somebody who has managed to save millions of lives (by being a good leader). In my view that is a much more noble act that should be recognized and honored.

“Other issues around this point is that the world is very quick to point out people like Mobutu [Sese Seko, former president of Zaire] or [Zimbabwe President Robert] Mugabe or [Ugandan dictator] Idi Amin. Every child in Europe knows about Idi Amin but how many people know about Chissano? When our first winner was announced, many people asked, who is Joaquim Chissano? We really need to show the world that Africa has such people. If you look beyond the headlines, you will find many more good guys, but nobody knows about them. We want to bring them to the light.

“The financial aspect of the prize is to enable these leaders to carry on giving in the absence of the support structure Western leaders enjoy after office. The idea is to enable them to live in a dignified manner and also to continue to serve the public and their causes after office. Good people with their experience in office have a lot to offer society. We need them to continue to be active.

“When Chissano won the prize we failed to contact him,” he continues. “[Former UN Secretary General] Kofi Annan was trying to reach him but could not, and we ended up going to the press conference without him. Later on it transpired that on that day he was in the jungle somewhere between the north of Uganda and the south of Sudan. He was somewhere on the border trying to negotiate with the North Army to end the conflict in northern Uganda. He was trying to end the war, and it was also his birthday. Here is somebody, at 68, it is his birthday, and he is in the jungle, unreachable, trying to negotiate for peace. That is wonderful and this is what we want these leaders to be doing. This is the role we want our African leaders to assume. The financial element allows people to do that.”

By highlighting people like Chissano, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation attempts to dispel some of the misconceptions about African leaders. “The idea that African leaders are corrupt by nature is not right,” Ibrahim notes. “In Europe when I am interviewed, they raise the issue of Idi Amin. I say we have many African countries, why focus on such people. Let’s talk about Europe: Was Hitler African, or Franco or Milosevic who committed genocide in the heart of Europe? By your admission these are people you put on trial, and they are European. Are we saying because there was genocide in Europe, then Europe is a terrible place for governance? No.

“Why don’t we look at things in proportion? Let us not focus on four or five leaders in Africa and say this is Africa,” he continues. “I always say look at Mandela. Last year Britain honored Mandela and erected a statue for him outside the House of Commons, with Blair saying he was a great man. So why do you forget that Mandela is an African? We are doing something the Americans or the Europeans have not done yet. We are taking major issues of governance with our leaders and we are measuring them and we are publishing our findings. We Africans are doing this, so let us be sensible.”

The issue is one of choice — what the media chooses to publish about Africa. “When we talk to the media people, they say ‘But what makes news? People doing the right thing don’t make news, but corrupt people do.’ I understand what they say but I think our problem is one of coverage. We have our slot (on the news or in the media) as Africa. Our slot is very small, so then comes the question of choosing headlines. There is no in-depth analysis. That is how I wake up to see Darfur as a major issue in Africa, or the Congo and the problems in Somalia, and they have no time for our stories, for what people are doing right.”

Ibrahim, a Sudanese Nubian, studied in Alexandria and is embraced by members of the Egyptian intelligentsia as one of their own because of his Marxist history. It begged the question: Why sub-Saharan Africa only, why not include North Africa and its Arab countries in his governance index?

“First, because I am a Nubian, an ancient African race. But also because we [Celtel International] run our operations in Africa. The money I made I made in Africa. So if I give it back, I have to give it back to the people who gave me this money in the first place. That is the natural thing to do.

“Another issue is a timeline one. As we were comparing, we recognized that the countries of sub-Saharan Africa have some issues to deal with that North African countries do not, like AIDS for example, which is not a major issue in Egypt or Algeria or Morocco. So is malaria and ethnic conflict. People in the north are more homogeneous. These are three of the major challenges facing the leaders and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, and it would not be fair for them to be compared at this moment with the countries above sub-Sahara. But maybe in five or 10 years things will be different.”

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is funded entirely by Ibrahim, his way of giving back as an individual and not as a corporation. President Bill Clinton said of his efforts, “Mo Ibrahim has started an African Foundation to help Africa move forward. That’s a good example of Africa helping itself and an important model for moving forward to create growth stability and peace in Africa.”

Something never comes out of nothing and the foundation goes back to Ibrahim’s background, both as a person and a businessman. “I have been brought up as a Muslim, and I became a Marxist. But I also look at it as a businessman,” Ibrahim explains. “In my company, I found that by turning my employees into my partners and shareholders, we made more money. By doing this, you have a hardworking loyal workforce. You unite the whole company behind a vision. You ensure success in what you are doing. I think we defeated the competition everywhere, every time, because we had the commitment of our people. We have the best people in the industry, and the best people in the industry will come to work for us because they are treated as human beings. They are treated with respect, and they share in the fruit of the work because it is only natural. It is justice.

“Maybe it is very selfish, because by giving you end up having more. So are you really giving?” et