Nobody Wins Africa’s (ig)Nobel Prize for Leadership … Again -The iPINIONS Journal

Here is the cynical note I sounded in 2006, when African businessman Mo Ibrahim announced his Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership (MIPAAL):

Mo seems to think that African leaders are so congenitally corrupt, the only way ‘to remove corruption and improve governance’ in Africa is, ironically, to bribe them…

And to prove his intent to vest this igNobel prize with (at least financial) value that surpasses that of the Nobel prize (at $1.4 million), Mo is offering a cash gift of $5 million over 10 years, when the winner leaves office, plus $200,000 a year for life. Moreover, to adorn his prize with a patina of integrity, he has decreed that only a leader who ‘democratically transfers power to his successor’ will be eligible to receive this golden parachute.

Unfortunately, given that it’s a long-established fringe benefit for African leaders to steal at least $5 million each year of their rule, this prize would seem at best an honorable perk….

(“Businessman Launches the Africa No “Mo” Corruption Prize,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 27, 2006)

And here is the vindicating note I sounded in 2009, when the MIPAAL committee deemed no African leader worthy of its prize.

Even I did not fully appreciate what a joke this prize would turn out to be. After all, despite being as qualified as any African leader could possibly be, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who was democratically elected and democratically transferred power to his successor, was not deemed worthy.

This vindicates my suspicion that the MIPAAL was always more about Mo’s ego than about promoting good governance in Africa. Now I suspect that the committee’s failure to present an award this year has more to do with his dwindling bank account than with the failure of anyone to qualify for his prize. (Forbes estimates that Mo lost $500 million of his $2.5 billion fortune last year.)

Accordingly, I hope all of the international dignitaries, including former UN Secretary-General and Nobel Laureate Kofi Annan, who Mo lured onto his committee to select the annual recipient of his MIPAAL, now have the good sense to resign en masse instead of continuing to be associated with this farce.

(“Mo Ibrahim: No Winner of Africa’s Version of Nobel Prize,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 20, 2009)

Now comes this:

For a second consecutive year, no leader has been deemed worthy of the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership…

There have also been accusations that failing to find a prize winner can encourage negative stereotypes about Africa and its leaders.

Hadeel Ibrahim, Mo’s daughter and founding executive director of the foundation, told CNN: ‘We’re holding a mirror up to Africa and if there’s a winner, congratulations to the winner and to that country, and if there’s no winner we hope that African people get more of the leadership they deserve.

(CNN, October 14, 2013)

But like I said, and with all due respect to Mo’s daughter, this failure is as much a reflection of Mo’s ulterior (self-aggrandizing) motive for establishing this prize as it is an indictment of African leadership.

Evidently, despite being more sustainable, it would have been too modest to associate his name with a prize of only $1-2 million with no lifetime annuity (i.e., more in line with the Nobel prize). Not to mention the folly and conceit inherent in Mo thinking that any African leader is going to govern in the vain hope that when he retires Mo will select him for this ignoble prize. No doubt Mo’s snub of Mbeki will prove very instructive in this respect.

At any rate, it is hardly surprising to me that, for four of its seven years, the MIPAAL committee has failed to find anyone worthy of its prize. More to the point, though, it is noteworthy that Forbes estimates that his wealth has fallen to $1.1 billion this year, again, down from $2.5 billion in 2008.

Still, to be fair, it might be helpful to know that, for 19 of its 112 years, the Nobel committee failed to find anyone worthy of its peace prize, and this is a committee that deemed PLO Chairman Yassar Arafat worthy. But I’m sure nobody ever had any cause to suspect that its failure had anything to do with concerns about being able to fund the prize in perpetuity.