CAN REFOMRED MARXIST JAMES ALIX MICHEL QUALIFY FOR THE AFRICAN NOBEL PRIZE?

CAN REFOMRED MARXIST JAMES ALIX MICHEL QUALIFY FOR THE AFRICAN NOBEL PRIZE?

One more way the ultra-rich are not like the rest of us: they can use their megabucks not only to do good, but to secure global, intergenerational fame at the same time. We remember Alfred Nobel much more for the prestigious prizes endowed by his estate than for his invention of that deadly staple of modern armies, TNT. Many more people are aware of Rhodes Scholarships than the career of the brilliant imperialist and racist Cecil Rhodes, who founded them with the profits from his African diamond mines. And in the course of just a decade, Bill Gates has managed to transform his image from visionary but cutthroat capitalist to transcendent philanthropist, by the efforts of his $32 billion foundation to tackle disease and poverty in Africa.

Mo Ibrahim wants to be part of that fraternity. He’s a successful London-based entrepreneur whose fortune rests on bringing cell phones to Africa. He sold his company in 2005 with a personal profit of $640 million. Now he’s putting $100 million into a foundation that among other things will fund a new annual prize, the richest in the world: the winner gets $5 million spread over 10 years, then $200,000 per year after that for life, plus another $200,000 per year to direct to any cause he or she wants. Who’s eligible? A very select group: honest African leaders.

The idea is to encourage good governance in a continent whose fantastic potential has been sapped by pervasive corruption. Ibrahim believes that “nothing, absolutely nothing, is more important to African development than good governance.” By holding out this prize, he hopes the temptation for African presidents and prime ministers to salt away millions in Swiss banks will be slightly reduced. They might even feel competitive pressure to demonstrate clean hands. In retirement, they will also have the financial independence to keep speaking out and setting a good example — a likely attraction for African leaders who haven’t been able to make money by lecturing and writing memoirs in the manner of American ex-presidents. “Sometimes,” says Ibrahim, “they find themselves without enough money to rent an apartment in the capital city that until a few weeks ago they were ruling from the palace on the top of the hill.”

Born in Cairo in 1946, the son of a cotton industry official and a Nubian mother (the ethnic group found in southern Egypt and northern Sudan), Ibrahim got an engineering degree and started working for a telecommunications company in Sudan. He got his Ph.D. in the then-obscure field of mobile telecommunications, and eventually started a company called Celtel to develop mobile phone services in Africa. By 2005 it was operating all over the continent and was sold to a Kuwaiti company for $6 billion — the source of Ibrahim’s wealth. He contends that Celtel never paid a bribe, and argues its success proves that real money can be made honestly in Africa — much of which, despite its bad press, is peaceful and ripe for development.

But not if its leaders have their hands in the till, which chokes off investment and enterprise on which development depends. Foreign aid donors have been trying to tackle this problem in the way they administer (and deny) grants, with some success, and African leaders have started a “peer review” system to compare notes, but both efforts are constrained by diplomatic proprieties. Ibrahim, who says he’s been thinking for years about what he could do to help the continent that made him rich, knows his private money has the freedom to make a few waves. And while his prize has guaranteed a lot of attention, the guts of his foundation’s work is a new system to publicize the successes and failures of African leaders — the Ibrahim Index. Under the direction of Harvard Professor Robert Rotberg, it will set out objective measures of how the 48 sub-Saharan African countries are performing in many areas, from corruption to judicial independence to respect for human rights to the delivery of health and education.

Ibrahim’s big idea is using the prize and the index to create a new tool to help people hold their politicians to account. “We will name and shame,” Ibrahim says. “We don’t want good governance to be about hiring a good speechwriter and winging it,” but “real, measurable progress in people’s lives. We need to give facts to the people so they can ask, ‘What am I getting out of my leader here?’ And having done that, we really want to celebrate the leaders who do well. 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.”

Harnessing the power of popular opinion to prod a whole continent to do better is a 21st century kind of philanthropy, quite different from setting up hospitals and libraries. But Ibrahim has touched a chord. He has backing from a host of luminaries, including Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz and former Irish President Mary Robinson. Nelson Mandela endorses the idea too: “This will allow Africans to measure their leaders against the highest standards of good governance,” he says. “It is appropriate that this will be the largest prize in the world. Nothing is more important. It aims to deliver the biggest prize of all: helping to ensure that our rich continent becomes a prosperous one for all its people.”

Who will nominate James Alix Michel?