LONDON -- A British billionaire in London announced Thursday that he will award Africa's most progressive leaders with a $5 million reward and a lifelong pension.
Egyptian-born Mo Ibrahim said that the performance of Africa's 53 leaders would be reviewed and ranked annually by Harvard University.
The best performing leader who steps down in a democratic process will receive $5 million over 10 years, plus $200,000 a year for life, the BBC reported.
The 60-year-old who sold Cel Tel, his pan-African mobile phone company, to MTC in Kuwait for $3.4 billion last year, told the Financial Times leaders feared losing everything when they leave office.
"That incites corruption - it incites people to cling to power," he said. "The prize will offer essentially good people, who may be wavering, the chance to opt for the good life after office."
The ranking criteria include security, health, education, and economic development to their constituents, the BBC said.
^Rather simplistic imo. Corruption is only one aspect of the problems with the way African governments operate, and it is not unique to Africa by any stretch of the imagination. African governments, by and large, have to have the backbone to resist external pressures from the more economically affluent nations; these would be pressures which come in the form of economic threat via sanctions or debt leverage, or military intervention for regime change. They'd have to have the backbone to unite and demand balanced trade policies between more economically affluent nations and the developing/emerging ones, and work with the many other nations in the globe which face the same obstacles as they do, in pushing for the overhaul of bodies like the UN, and utilizing their united leverage to confront "creditor" nations of the World bank and the IMF in their socially destructive policies of "debt-restructuring". As it is, heads of states of the said affected economies rarely unite in the interests of their masses. Given the complexities in the geopolitical landscape, and disconnect between ruling layers and the masses both in terms of scope of social interests and level of political consciousness, it is difficult to tell when the gap between these social layers will be bridged.
Posted by Underpants Man (Member # 3735) on :