ifikepunye Pohamba, outgoing president of
Namibia, has won the world’s most valuable individual award – the 2014 edition
of the Mo Ibrahim prize for African leadership. Pohamba was a founding member
of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), an armed movement that
waged a decades-long campaign for independence against South Africa. The award,
which is worth $5 million, is given each year to an elected leader who governed
well and raised living standards before leaving office. The money is spread
over 10 years and is followed by $200,000 a year for life. However, on four
occasions, the prize has gone unclaimed because the organisers found no one
deserving of it. Mo Ibrahim, a British-Sudanese mobile communications
entrepreneur, who founded the award eight years ago, said he launched it to
encourage African leaders to leave power peacefully. The inaugural prize was
awarded in 2007 to Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique’s former president, who has
since acted as a mediator in several African disputes. An honorary prize was
also awarded the same year to Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s much-loved first
black president, who stepped down after just one term in office. The following
year, in 2008, Botswana’s former president Festus Mogae won the prize. Having
pledged at his 1998 inauguration ceremony to address poverty and unemployment
in the diamond-rich country, President Mogae’s time in office was characterised
by programmes to develop education and health infrastructure, and to privatise
parts of the economy, notably the airlines and telecommunications industry. The
following two years, the prize went unawarded, ostensibly because of a lack of
viable contenders. In 2011, Pedro Pires, a former president of Cape Verde was
announced as the winner; but in 2012 and 2013, the organisers found no one
worthy of the award.
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