No clear winner

Oct 23rd, 2009 4:21 PM EST
By Beth Adler

On Monday, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that they would not award their $5 million prize for excellence in African leadership this year. The Foundation, created by Sudanese telecommunications mogul Mo Ibrahim, has awarded the prize for the past two years to encourage responsible, democratic leadership across Africa. The prize, given last year to former president of Botswana, Festus Gontebanye Mogae, is awarded to a former African leader who has demonstrated excellence in leadership, served their term in office within the limits set by the country’s constitution, and has left office in the last three years. The guidelines for the prize, however, stipulate that if there is no exceptional candidate in a given year, then the prize will not be awarded.

The prize is only one part of the Foundation’s larger effort to promote good governance and highlight leadership on the African continent; it acts as an effective complement to the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. The Index, the third iteration of which was released recently, is a comprehensive ranking of African governments. In the 2009 Index, each country is measured by 84 indicators grouped into four categories: Safety and Security, Participation and Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity, and Human Development.

Overall, Southern Africa was the best performing region with Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho all included in the top 10. Southern African country Mauritius claimed the top spot in the rankings, coming in first in all four categories, followed by Cape Verde, Seychelles and Botswana. North Africa was the second-best overall performer, followed by West Africa and East Africa. According to the index, Central Africa was the worst-performing region on the continent with all seven of its countries scoring outside the top 20. Somalia ranked as the worst-governed nation in Africa, behind Zimbabwe and Chad. Rwanda was ranked surprisingly poorly in this year’s index: the country dropped to 32 from its place at 18 last year.

This year’s index includes data from both 2007 and 2008, making it one of the most current measurements of African governance. It also includes new indicators as well as a new framework for assessing governance comprehensively on the continent. For the first time, rather than focusing only on sub-Saharan Africa, the 2009 index includes measurements for North Africa. The index now measures all 53 African countries, allowing for a look at governance in Africa as a whole. Paul Collier, author of the Bottom Billion and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford praised the Ibrahim index, lauding its comprehensive and unbiased nature as well as the fact that “it is an exclusively African undertaking.”

In an op-ed released on Monday, Ibrahim discussed the importance of African governance, saying: “Ultimately, both the index and the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the $5m prize we award to former African leaders, are about improving the lives of Africans through better governance and excellence in leadership.” The work of the Mo Ibrahim foundation, both through the prize and the Index on governance, is extremely important in highlighting the crucial issue of good governance in Africa. According to the 2009 Index about half of African countries did improve this year. However, having no clear winner for the prize indicates how much more work there is to do.

TAGS: Governance and Security, Policy News, Spotlight