If nothing else, the fact that a wealthy African is willing to dedicate some of his wealth to addressing the leadership problem should have a substantial inspirational impact on others with respect to the basic premise of ALPN’s advocacy, i.e., that the onus is on accomplished Africans themselves to bring about better governance in their countries, with or without help from the international community.

    As we have argued (e.g., in the briefs cited above), regardless of the underlying historical reasons for Africa’s current leadership and development crises, well-off (and even not-so-well-off) Africans have the ultimate responsibility for meeting this challenge, and must strive to do so with a desperate sense of urgency, through effective pooling of financial, intellectual, networking, and other resources. Surely, those Africans who successfully fought colonialists and dictators in the past have demonstrated that success is possible through effective pooling of resources, however meager, and innovative strategies.

    Of course, the international community has a responsibility to help, and some rich-country governments and institutions have done so to a certain extent. However, given the realities of global geopolitics and economics, it is unrealistic to expect that the international community will deliver Africans from bad leaders. Even the most well-intentioned rich-country governments and institutions often face severe domestic and international political and economic constraints with respect to what they can actually do to foster better governance in Africa.

    In general, getting wealthy governments, foundations, and individuals to make substantial investments in leadership and governance initiatives remains a very difficult task. This is partly because the success of such initiatives is often uncertain and not immediately and clearly evident, highly visible, or easily measurable (compared to, say, stopping conflicts and wars, building education and health infrastructures, etc.). Thus, even those foundations and governments that genuinely want to promote good governance are generally not inclined to provide substantial financing for (often expensive) governance initiatives, especially as there are always high-visibility crises that demand immediate attention and commitment of the limited resources available.

    Currently, only a tiny fraction of the aid budgets of rich countries is allocated to promoting better governance in poorly-run countries and, worse, very little of this is allocated to independent initiatives. Instead, aid funds are usually given directly to the same corrupt governments, which are then exhorted to undertake governance reforms that, if successful, would eventually force them out of office. Not surprisingly, this clearly unrealistic approach has so far produced only very limited and halting progress.

    An argument that will hopefully gain greater acceptance is that much more substantive investment to foster better governance in African countries will ultimately provide high returns to wealthy countries and foundations: With only a small fraction of the billions of dollars in aid that will continue to be misused or stolen, substantial investments in highly effective leadership and governance initiatives would:

- save donors billions of dollars in future aid that would otherwise be needed to deal with the increased poverty, civil strife, wars, etc., that will inevitably be the consequence of continued bad governance; and

- greatly reduce the growth of global terrorism that is likely to result from state failure in many countries.

    In general, foundations, governments, and organizations such as the World Bank are wary of funding aggressive, high-impact initiatives because of sensitivities to accusations by African leaders that Western governments and institutions are interfering in their countries’ internal affairs and attempting to remove them from power. This obviously underscores why highly potent, grassroots-based independent initiatives need to be developed and led by Africans themselves. External funding will continue to have limited impact without strong indigenous efforts by highly motivated, credible, competent and dedicated Africans.

    In any case, Africans must assume that they will not get much help from the international community to support their efforts and must therefore take charge on their own, even with only meager resources. It is in this regard that wealthy African benefactors such as Dr. Ibrahim can play crucial roles that will have transformational impact, i.e., by jump-starting massive resource-pooling efforts and independent governance and leadership development initiatives.

    Even if started on a small scale, an initiative that demonstrates strong potential and effectiveness will be able to attract more substantial support from various sources, including the international community. Stronger backing from the international community would, in turn, enable those working to bring about better governance to do their work with much less fear of repression and persecution, thereby ensuring much quicker and greater impact.

    Hopefully, since the impact of aid-based and governmental initiatives such as the APRM will remain quite limited, independent efforts such as Dr. Ibrahim’s will further inspire other well-off Africans to become more proactive, by generating, and investing in, innovative ideas and implementing independent leadership development initiatives.

    Many critics have noted, however, that, given the limited resources currently available for such initiatives, the Ibrahim Foundation’s approach is not necessarily the most cost-effective means of bringing about better governance in African countries, and that the funds could be better utilized to build the infrastructures that are direly needed to foster accountability.

    Dr. Ibrahim explains his rationale for establishing the Leadership Prize, which has drawn much praise and support from Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and numerous others, as follows:

"...We need to get out of this pessimism that all African leaders are corrupt. There are some doing wonderful things and implementing the right policies. They need to be honoured... Running an African country is the toughest job in the world. And if you do manage to take five million people out of poverty, or get clean water to people or educate kids, a $5 million reward is peanuts..." [“Mo Ibrahim Unveiled”, The East African]

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"...There is much gossip and speculation about what Tony Blair will do when he leaves office next year. Will he join the lecture circuit? Will he take on a series of directorships? Will he write his memoirs?...In Africa, the choices for heads of state are more sobering. Most leave office with no chance of sustaining a lifestyle equivalent to the one they enjoy while in office. The income of former heads of government may seem a trifling issue compared to the major problems faced by many of the continent's citizens. In fact it is of fundamental importance in securing its future. ...A situation in which leaders face three choices - relative poverty, term extension, or corruption - is not conducive to good governance. And the continent's problems will not be solved unless governance improves radically. That's why I am today launching a foundation that aims to change fundamentally the choices faced by African leaders, and as a result recast the terms of the governance debate..." [Mo Ibrahim, “Leading Africa Forward”]

    Many skeptics have, however, expressed doubt that the Leadership Prize can motivate African leaders who are not already so inclined to govern well. Many Africans also find it disturbing and humiliating that their leaders have to be "bribed" to do what they are supposed to do, i.e., govern well. Furthermore, some critics have pointed out that the Leadership Prize approach places too much emphasis on one person rather than the more important focus on political elites and their cronies, public institutions, bureaucracies, citizenries, etc., and thereby only further perpetuates the stereotypical African 'big man' syndrome. One commentator, for example, highlights some of the key challenges in this regard:

    The rationale for the Prize – i.e., that the only choice facing a leader besides term extension and corruption is relative poverty – is tenuous at best. In today’s global environment, Africans who distinguish themselves through exemplary leadership can count on international accolades and numerous avenues for ensuring their financial security and international recognition. Organizations such as the Clinton Global Initiative, the Gates Foundation, the Soros Foundations, and others would only be too glad to provide such leaders with the global platform, financial security, and resources to enable them continue to do work that will have a substantive impact on African development. Nelson Mandela is, of course, the most obvious example in this regard. But even if his case is an unusual or unique one, other recent examples include Ngozi Okonji-Iweala (the former Nigerian Minister of Finance who is now back at the World Bank following a stint at Washington, DC’s prestigious think-tank, the Brookings Institution), John Kithongo (Kenya’s former permanent secretary in charge of governance and ethics, now a senior associate member of St Antony’s College, Oxford, UK), and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai.

    Obviously, the increased attention and discourse on governance in Africa generated by the Prize and Governance Index are very positive developments, for which Dr. Ibrahim should be highly lauded. However, as he himself has acknowledged, these initiatives by themselves are not sufficient to adequately address the governance challenge.

    Looking ahead, say, over the next 10-15 years, the Prize is likely to go to leaders who governed or are governing well and were already inclined to be good leaders anyway without the enticement of the award. Thus, it is still not clear how the Prize will motivate any of the current leaders of Africa’s most populous and/or resource-rich nations, virtually all of which are badly governed, to change behavior or relinquish power voluntarily, since they know that they are unlikely to ever win the Prize.

    This is, of course, the daunting challenge that can be successfully addressed only if substantial resources are invested consistently over several years in high-impact initiatives that will foster transparency and accountability. The question, therefore, is how best to utilize the limited resources available, and whether the Leadership Prize and the Governance Index are the most cost-effective approaches in this regard.

    The Ibrahim Governance Index is intended to be a tool to be used in addressing the daunting governance challenge. According to the Ibrahim Foundation, the Index is a comprehensive ranking of good governance developed "in recognition of the need for a more comprehensive, objective and quantifiable method of measuring governance quality in sub-Saharan Africa." The Foundation expects that "its publication will lead to an improvement in the way in which the citizens of sub-Saharan African countries are governed, while stimulating debate across societies about the criteria by which good governance should best be assessed."

    According to Dr. Ibrahim, the governance information reflected in the Index is intended to "really energize civil society...We will give information to civil society. That is accountability, which is very important" (Speech by Dr. Ibrahim at the UN’s 7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government). He also stresses the importance of, and need for, independent initiatives by Africans themselves:

"This is an African initiative, occupying a unique space which NGOs, foreign donors and the investment community, for obvious reasons, are not able to fill. I am committing my resources to it because I am convinced that, used in this way, they can have a massive and disproportionate impact on the health and prosperity of the continent." (Emphasis added) [Mo Ibrahim, “Leading Africa Forward”]

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"...So, we set out really to do the things that you believe that neither the World Bank, nor the United Nations, nor the European Union, nor the other Communities can do, which is to speak frankly. Because we are a member of civil society, we are really able to speak frankly, to measure, and publish, and rank, and tell countries what we are doing and also tell leaders what they are doing, because we are going to map each leader’s period of leadership on their performance. Then, we need to give these facts to civil society in a very easily digestible form to know exactly what we are doing. Then, you take issues with guys, if you want to." (Emphasis added) [Speech by Dr. Ibrahim at the UN’s 7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government]

        ---

    Unfortunately, most African countries currently do not have such vigorous and highly influential civil society organizations that focus on governance issues, and the handful that are genuinely committed, highly motivated, and truly independent have very limited resources. They are therefore weak and not very effective, since they are usually dealing with powerful, corrupt, and often ruthless leaders and their cronies who control their nations’ resources and have no qualms about using these resources to harass, suppress, or even kill those who demand accountability, believing, usually correctly, that they can get away with poor performance and criminal behavior. Furthermore, many other organizations that proclaim themselves to be part of civil society are not truly independent, or are motivated primarily by partisan political and financial considerations, and therefore lack credibility.

    Clearly, the most critical need is therefore the establishment of high quality institutions and infrastructures that can be effectively "energized" to actually bring about substantive change by sharply focusing on high-impact strategies. Otherwise, as useful as it is to measure and rank governance, the Ibrahim Index will have little impact on most African leaders, who will simply ignore or dismiss it, as they have other older ratings of leadership performance, such as: Freedom House’s Freedom in the World, Global Integrity Index, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, the Millennium Challenge Corporation's Selection Criteria, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, the World Bank's Governance Indicators, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, the Open Budget Initiative's Open Budget Index/Budget Transparency Country Rankings, etc. Usually, following publications of these ratings, there’s some media coverage, along with lamentation and hand-wringing about poor governance in Africa, and then everyone goes on with business as usual.

    Nevertheless, the Ibrahim Index has the potential to have much greater impact than previous rankings because it (a) puts a specific focus on Africa, (b) is sponsored by an African who evidently is prepared to use his considerable resources to bring about change, (c) is supported by respected figures such as Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, and (d) has an advisory council made up of "eminent African academics." Hence, it cannot simply be dismissed as yet another set of ratings produced by biased non-Africans, though it does rely largely on data produced by non-African organizations and was developed at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

    Despite its shortcomings (discussed below), publication of the Index reportedly has generated much media coverage and discourse in African countries and internationally, including discussions at the Brookings Institution ("How to Rank Good Governance: The Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership"), the World Bank ("Africa's Crises: Strengthening Leadership & Governance"), and other institutions. However, it remains to be seen what practical impact it will have, i.e., whether (a) it will indeed generate enough debate to put African leaders under much greater scrutiny and pressure, and (b) the increased attention will galvanize Africans and others to be more proactive about demanding greater accountability from their leaders.

    To ensure the desired substantive impact beyond press coverage and passive debate with little consequential action, Dr. Ibrahim and his distinguished supporters will need to use their substantial stature and clout to deliberately and forcefully bring immense pressure to bear on African leaders and force them to pay attention. Even then, the failure to date of the APRM’s peer review approach (after more than five years) has already shown that not much will happen unless civil society and citizenries are effectively galvanized to demand better governance.

    Furthermore, the Index’s potential impact is in danger of being undercut by its shortcomings. Because its ratings are derived from some of the same data used to compute previous ratings (such as those cited above), the Index, not surprisingly, provides little additional information -- beyond the overall assessments already evident from these other indexes -- that can have any significant impact on African leaders.

    As the developers of the Index themselves acknowledge, and critics have noted, the inaugural "2007" index, which is actually based largely on 2005 data, needs to be refined to provide more accurate indicators of leadership performance, as there is much to criticize about the methodology used and the conclusions derived therefrom. [See, for example, the transcript of the panel discussion at the Brookings Institution and Marta Foresti, "Assessing governance: No easy task", for critiques.]

    One glaring example is Gabon, a country that has been ruled by an oppressive dictatorship for over 40 years, ranked at No. 6 in overall governance, largely on the strength of its No. 1 ranking in the "Safety and Security" category, which ironically is a result of severe repression. Similarly, Equatorial Guinea, clearly a very badly governed country, earns a relatively respectable 32^nd ranking overall, largely because of a very high ‘Safety and Security’ ranking.

    Another important aspect of the Index’s ratings that needs to be comprehensively addressed is the distinction between measures of the state of affairs in a country, which may be the result of the actions of previous leaders and therefore is not necessarily attributable to the leadership in power at the time data were collected, and change in the country’s state of affairs based on actual performance of the leadership. For example, a leader may be doing a great job of cleaning up the mess left by her predecessor, which would imply a very high "change" (performance) score despite a low "state" score. [The World Bank’s Aart Kraay also makes a related distinction between the "development" and "governance" aspects of the Index’s measures during the panel discussion at the Brookings event.]

    Interestingly, with the exception of Gabon (for the reason noted above) and smaller countries that are not included in the BTI, the Ibrahim Index’s rankings are quite similar to the BTI’s 2006 Status Index (which are also based on 2005 data), e.g., the top six countries common to both indexes, and their ranking orders, are exactly the same. (The BTI does not include all sub-Saharan African countries, while the Ibrahim Index does.) For obvious reasons, as explained above, the Management Index is not as highly correlated with the Ibrahim and BTI Status Indexes.

    To be sure, despite its limitations, the overall impact of the Ibrahim approach to date has been positive, as several commentators have noted—it clearly has generated increased attention and advanced the discourse on governance in African countries. However, in order to ensure the transformational impact that is necessary, the limited resources available should be applied toward establishment of strong, independent, and high-quality information infrastructures and civil society organizations that can be effectively energized to foster better governance. We present an approach for achieving this goal in the next section.

    Better governance and leaderships will evolve only when those in power know that they will pay severe penalties for poor performance, i.e., if there is strong public demand and pressure to make them - and those foreign firms and governments that aid and abet them - more accountable. But then such public pressure will evolve only if populaces are well-informed about their countries’ resources, how well they are utilized, how to demand and ensure transparency and accountability, etc., and then take the necessary actions to hold their leaders’ feet to the fire.

    Unfortunately, as noted above, most African countries do not have the strong and independent civil society organizations that can effectively utilize the information provided by the Ibrahim Index and others to bring about better leadership performance. Given the substantial resources required, the most crucial role that wealthy Africans such as Dr. Ibrahim can play is to galvanize massive and effective resource-pooling efforts among well-off Africans, in order to provide a solid resource base for implementing critical initiatives, such as:

1. Establishment of high-impact, independent, and robust information-based institutions and infrastructures that will energize citizenries, especially at the grassroots, to take charge of fostering change and force their leaders to be accountable. These would include, for example:

2. Development of young people with exceptional potential, and provision of support for genuine emerging leaders, in order to facilitate the rapid emergence of visionary and transformational leaders. [See ALPN’s African Leadership Capacity Development Project for a detailed framework. See also The Global Integrity Alliance.]

    Of course, resource-pooling need not be restricted to only well-off Africans. Even Africans of modest means can also pool resources and launch small-scale initiatives that can have significant impact--the resources do not have to be financial: resource-pooling could be through intellectual collaborations, network development, information dissemination, advisory services, etc. [For details, see ALPN’s briefs: "After the 2005 G8 and UN Summits: Independent, High-Impact Information Infrastructures and Networks for Transparency and Accountability in African Countries" and "Addressing Africa’s Humiliation: 'Brain Gain'/'Brain Circulation' Diaspora Networks for African Progress".]

    As ALPN has advocated, one particular high-potential group of Africans, so-called "Brain Drain"/Diaspora Africans (BDAs) resident in Western countries, is particularly well-suited and well-placed to implement many of these independent, nongovernmental initiatives in several innovative ways. [For links to information and websites on work by BDAs worldwide, visit ALPN’s Research/Information Portal: Brain Drain, Brain Gain, Brain Circulation, Diaspora Africans, and Capacity Building in Africa.]

    Based on the (obvious) reasoning that BDAs have a special responsibility to pool their resources toward fostering better governance in Africa, ALPN is working to facilitate the development of such networks [see ALPN’s Leadership & Governance Capacity Building in African Countries...]. As Dr. Ibrahim has noted, "we Africans in the diaspora, who have had the opportunity to be in the developed world, to learn skills and to build personal wealth, have a duty to Africa. We need to support the continent through various efforts such as investing in it. We have a debt to pay to our people and our families..." [“Mo Ibrahim Unveiled”, The East African]

    For various reasons, many BDAs are unable to permanently relocate back to their native countries. However, given the ease of collaboration, discourse, networking, and information collection and dissemination through the Internet and other information/communications technologies, they can still work on the transparency and accountability issues outlined above even without such relocation. In some cases, occasional short visits to their native countries may be necessary and, in other cases, e.g., where governments are highly repressive, BDAs could even be more effective working on initiatives from outside their native countries. [For a detailed discussion, see ALPN’s brief: Addressing Africa’s Humiliation: 'Brain Gain'/'Brain Circulation' Diaspora Networks for African Progress.]