Leading article: Money alone will not change Africa's ways
Friday, 27 October 2006
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Five million US dollars is a lot of money. But will it be enough of an incentive to keep an African head of state on the straight and narrow? The annual prize just announced by Africa's most successful businessman, the mobile phone entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, will offer a substantial pension to leaders on that continent who provide good government to their subjects - and then leave office when the constitution says they should.
It is certainly a bold initiative. The temptation for leaders in Africa has been to line their pockets in anticipation of the day when the mansions, cars, banquets and fine wines evaporate as they leave power. The theory is that if a departing president knows he is in the running to get $500,000 a year for the next decade, and $200,000 annually for the rest of his life, he won't need to nick it from the national treasury. The trouble is that many African politicians have seized the chance to purloin an awful lot more than that in the past.
But there are other ways to create incentives for political leaders to do the right thing. Perhaps the best is to promote debate among African electorates - and to create systems of public accountability to make that debate well-informed. Mo Ibrahim is doing just that by setting up a rigorous new index to measure good governance in sub-Saharan Africa on a country-by-country basis - and ensuring its independence by having it run by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Information like that will put real power in the hands of African voters. In the end, that is the only thing that will improve standards of political leadership on that unhappy continent.
