BY Taiwo George
Hifikepunye Pohamba, outgoing president of Namibia, has won the world’s most valuable individual award – the 2014 edition of the Mo Ibrahim prize for African leadership.
Pohamba was a founding member of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), an armed movement that waged a decades-long campaign for independence against South Africa.
The award, which is worth $5 million, is given each year to an elected leader who governed well and raised living standards before leaving office.
The money is spread over 10 years and is followed by $200,000 a year for life.
However, on four occasions, the prize has gone unclaimed because the organisers found no one deserving of it.
Mo Ibrahim, a British-Sudanese mobile communications entrepreneur, who founded the award eight years ago, said he launched it to encourage African leaders to leave power peacefully.
The inaugural prize was awarded in 2007 to Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique’s former president, who has since acted as a mediator in several African disputes.
An honorary prize was also awarded the same year to Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s much-loved first black president, who stepped down after just one term in office.
The following year, in 2008, Botswana’s former president Festus Mogae won the prize.
Having pledged at his 1998 inauguration ceremony to address poverty and unemployment in the diamond-rich country, President Mogae’s time in office was characterised by programmes to develop education and health infrastructure, and to privatise parts of the economy, notably the airlines and telecommunications industry.
The following two years, the prize went unawarded, ostensibly because of a lack of viable contenders.
In 2011, Pedro Pires, a former president of Cape Verde was announced as the winner; but in 2012 and 2013, the organisers found no one worthy of the award.
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