AFRICAN GOVERNANCE

Mo Ibrahim is a Sudanese entrepreneur, who made a truckload of money developing mobile phone networks in Africa. Some years ago he established an annual prize aimed at promoting good governance on the continent. Any African head of state who has governed well, raised living standards, and then left office, gets US$5m spread over 10 years, followed by US$200,000 a year for life. The idea is both to reduce the incentives to remain in office indefinitely, and to use that time in office productively, without pilfering from state coffers.

Those are very generous terms (it's the world's most lucrative official prize) and a fairly low threshold. Despite that, there have only been three recipients in the seven-year history of the prize; Cape Verde's Pedro Verona Pires, Botswana's Festus Mogae and Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano. This year was the fourth in the last five years when the prize went unclaimed.

If there are more than 50 African countries, and constitutional two-term limits for Presidents, then you would expect there to be, on average, at least five candidates a year for the prize. That there aren't shows just how difficult it is to implement good governance in Africa.

Walter Blotscher