Next month, Ibrahim’s eponymous foundation will announce the first winner of its Achievement in African Leadership Prize. It will be by far the world’s most generous annual philanthropic prize, worth three times as much as the Nobel: the winner will receive $5 million—spread out over 10 years—and $200,000 per year beyond that, until death. Only democratically elected sub-Saharan leaders can qualify. They will be judged by how well they’ve performed in eight categories, including offering security to their citizens, as well as promoting the rule of law, economic opportunity and political freedom. And to collect, they will have to leave office when their term ends, with no clouds over their tenure.
Ibrahim is hoping the prize will give African leaders an alternative to raiding state coffers or dispensing with elections in order to cling to power. In the West, former heads of state can count on book deals, seats on corporate boards and lecture circuits to make them rich when they leave office. Some, like Bill Clinton, become such powerful global statesmen that their legacies are defined as much by what they do after office as what they did in it. Africa’s heads of state, on the other hand—with the single notable exception of Nelson Mandela—typically have only a life of penury and insignificance to look forward to when they step down. Pensions are so small that some, like Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, can’t even afford to rent apartments in their own capital cities, says Ibrahim.
The new prize, which Ibrahim is funding entirely out of his estimated $1 billion fortune, is also meant as a way to take advantage of the skills African leaders have developed while in power. On top of the prize money, winners will be entitled to $200,000 a year to pursue philanthropic work. “Our guys should have a life after office,” says Ibrahim. “They should be role models, with the resources to use their experience to help society.” Ibrahim’s interest in improving African society has a long history. The soft-spoken son of a clerk with a moralistic streak, he proved with Celtel that an African company could be wildly successful without paying bribes. He first put his mind to the leadership question several years ago, after a friend serving on the board of a major multinational told him that his company wasn’t interested in doing business in Uganda because of Idi Amin. “I had to tell him that Amin hadn’t been in office for more than 20 years!” Ibrahim says. “It opened my eyes to how little people knew about the good in Africa.”
Former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan is chairing Ibrahim’s prize committee, which is using a complex set of benchmarks designed by Robert Rotberg, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to judge candidates from 48 countries. Clinton and Mandela, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, have endorsed the process. Yet critics say that the $5 million award isn’t nearly enough: even the heads of the smallest African states could embezzle many multiples of that from their treasuries. Cynics predict that because corruption is so endemic in Africa, there will never be enough candidates for the prize, and it will be frozen for years at a time. “Those inclined towards repression and corruption aren’t going to be dissuaded by this award,” says Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies program at Johns Hopkins University.
Ibrahim counters that the prize isn’t intended to lure hideous dictators like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe from power. The idea is to give good leaders the strength to stick to their ideals. Even better, he says, the prize has the potential to make political office a more appealing choice for Africa’s brightest young minds, who will see prestige and money as the rewards for good politicians. “I believe that us business people who have made money in Africa have a responsibility to help bring good governance there,” says Ibrahim, a smile in his eyes. Even democracy has a price.
