African Leader Prize

This is a very interesting story (African Leader Prize). A mobile phone company mogul from Britain Mo Ibrahim (he is Egyptian by the way) is trying to tackle corruption in Africa using a different method. This billionaire is offering to pay $5 million to any Head of an African State that leaves office after their term is over (versus going to Parliament and bribing the members into changing the Constitution to allow him to run for another term....such an old trick!!!) Mr. Ibrahim said his prize, which will be more than three times as much as the most famous prize, the Nobel Prize ($1.3 million) was established for good leaders who are afraid of losing out on all the luxuries when they leave office. Such fear makes it easier for them to become corrupt. So hopefully this money will help ease that decision.
Pretty cool idea honestly, I am not sure if it will work. These heads of states in Africa usually have embezzled so much money already that they stay in power not just for the actual money but for the might and power (and definitely to protect themselves from the U.N. and the people of their government if they have caused any human right defenses). So I am not sure if this $5 million will be enough.

I can see it being sought after as a publicity stunt. That is, lets say Dictator X decides that his country is out of control, he retires takes the award and the compliments with it, installs his own puppet in his place to give the impression that there is a democracy and then when things go bad come back to save his country (has happened on various occasions in Africa).

By the way, I was checking the latest Corruption Index that shows how countries performed in terms of not being corrupt (10 is perfectly not corrupt and I guess 0 is for completely corrupt). Let me tell you, I had to scroll quite a bit to get to the first African country. Botswana was the first African country to show up on the list ranked at #35 (which is actually pretty good), Tunisia ranked 43rd, South Africa 46th, and Namibia at 49th, that's 4 countries in the top 50. In any case, I think discussing corruption is so crucial and important because we need to recognize that poverty and corruption go hand in hand. Good governance (or lack of corruption) is the main way to eliminate poverty. Alot of these poor countries have great resources, its just the corruption sometimes.

Transparency International