From the outside looking in with Ikebes Omoding African presidents fail to win Mo Ibrahim Prize For the last five years running, African presidents have failed to qualify to win the Mo Ibrahim Prize for leadership. Since its inception in 2005, only three presidents have been awarded the prestigious $5m dollar prize: Joachim Chissano of Mozambique; Festus Moghae of Botswana; and, Pedro Pirez of Cape Verde. Millionaire businessman, Mohammed Ibrahim, set up the award to motivate African presidents to among other things; lift their respective populations out of poverty, inspire political responsibility, accountability; and then afterwards, step off from power. The African political landscape is sadly lacking in all of these. Arguments have been put forward that the reasons that there are few qualifiers is that the conditions laid down are too high. But one of the members of the board of the Prize, Salim Ahmed Salim, himself former African politician and long-time holding Tanzanian foreign minister, said that these are not valid cases because other leaders elsewhere have such qualities. It cannot be that only African leaders should be allowed the leeway to fall short of political morality. Take the case for lifting Africa out of poverty: the Continent is endowed with a vast array of minerals needed for improving the general human condition and therefore making it a case for middle income populations. Right now, it is only Botswana that can say that it has used its diamond wealth for the benefit of its entire people. Despite their oil wealth and considerable time in its exploitation, Angola, Nigeria, or Equatorial Guinea cannot claim to have used it to uplift their populations from poverty. Yet in all those countries the political leaders have become unexplainably filthy rich. A country like the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the epitome of Africas riches in minerals. But it is a testament to impunity, criminality and political incompetence. The DRC is not alone; nearly all African countries fall under a similar curse. Instead of working to industrialize Africa, the respective African presidents stupidly run to other hard-working countries to sell their raw minerals to those countries benefit. Willy-nilly now the Africans presidents are a common site in Beijing with begging bowls in China; why can these leaders not learn that China was almost like then about two decades ago? In fact the case for the Asian Tigers is apt. Like the African countries about 50 years ago, they were also coming out form colonial status, yet they have managed to industrialize and get their populations to the middle income level. A county like Vietnam, mired in a debilitating war with the United States in the 1960s and part of the 70s, is now on the path to development; yet African presidents are watching. Their predilection is only to steal money from their national coffers to take to hide in off-shore Caribbean islands banks. Western countries are struggling hard against economic recession and unemployment of their youths: the media is awash with their efforts and it is visible that those leaders are working to stabilize their countries. African presidents are merely gawking at those efforts and are less concerned about how those countries are striving. The only thing one can note with the African presidents in their personal largesse and that of their families and the cohorts surrounding them. The rest of their populations are left to fend for themselves. The only providential thing is that Africa is largely agricultural and so the peoples are able, to at least, feed themselves. But on occasions nature defeats them and they fall into famines, which were African presidents responsible, could be averted by technological innovations. The case for political responsibility is equally pertinent. A recent case was when African presidents trooped to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for their African Union (AU) meeting to try to stymie the International Criminal Court (ICC) from trying Kenyas Uhuru Kenyatta for the indictments for the acts of alleged brigandage he was part of during the 2007 presidential elections in that country. Seeing that a strong case against Kenyatta could be a similar mill around their corrupt necks, they now want to get out of the Rome Statute that governs the establishment of the ICC. Many of them are undoubtedly a reflection of former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, who has been sentenced to 50 years for acts of genocide, child soldiers, human rights abuses such as hacking off peoples limbs, including the selling of blood diamonds to finance his oppression of the Liberian people. Under these circumstances it is difficult to see how the African presidents can win the Mo Ibrahim Prize; although one can sense that if there was a way to, they are itching to lay their hands on that $5m booty without having to work for it! szumuz@yahoo
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 09:59:50 +0000
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