On Saturday, April 20, Sudanese entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim received the Africare Leadership Award given by the largest Afro-American organization focused on assistance and development in Africa. Mo began his speech by saying that former president Lula is an example of “how a president is capable of changing a country.” Later, he praised the efforts of the former president of Brazil to strengthen its ties with Africa recalling: “Lula traveled to the African continent 38 times. He is a true friend of Africa.”
The Sudanese made a long and improvised speech, in which he showed great hope for the development of the African continent, but did not contain his criticism of the unjustifiably prolonged problem of hunger in Africa. “We are a rich Continent. We owe nothing to no one, and there is no reason for us to have to coexist with poor and famished children [on the continent].”
Darius Mans, president of the American NGO, introduced Mo Ibrahim as the man responsible for the cellular phone revolution in Africa. Mo is one of the first entrepreneurs to bet on the explosion of cellular telephone use on the continent. Currently, the Sudanese entrepreneur has a foundation that created an index to measure governability and transparency to encourage democracy in Africa. He also offers an annual award for ex-presidents who have been outstanding in changing the lives of people in their countries. “It’s too bad that Lula is not an African president, if he were, he would have [an award of] US$ 5 million,” he joked. And he added: “Or he can still become a candidate for president in one of our countries.”
Listen the audio:
Former-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mo Ibrahim have met various times, most recently in December when Lula visited the African continent. Lula recalled the meeting in his speech: “Last December, we had a long and pleasant conversation. And I can attest to the serious work that Mo Ibrahim is doing for the development, democracy and for better governance in Africa.”
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation has become a reference for those who wish to deepen their understanding of Africa and support the development of the Continent by combating social inequality. Africare was absolutely correct to recognize him with this award, and that is the reason I am here.”
To learn more about the Mo Ibrahim Foundation: http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org
Read below the trasncription of the full speech of Mr. Mo Ibrahim in Washington:
I’m really speechless, and people who know me know this is a rare occasion. I’m really humbled, and I’m so grateful for Africare, for your kindness. It’s an amazing honor for me to follow in the footsteps of a great man like President Lula. What President Lula did for Brazil is just amazing. It shows what a president can do to change his country, really. Unfortunately President Lula, you are not African, you would have got 5 million dollars. But maybe you can come and stand for election in one of our countries and help us get out of the mess we are in.
Brothers and sisters, it’s really wonderful to be here, and I know it has been a long evening, so I will try not to take too much of your time, but maybe just a few things I would really love to say. Africa is moving forward. There’s no question about that. For the last ten years there has been considerable economic growth in Africa. Health, education improved quite a lot. Women’s rights improved. We produce the index, as you know; we measured all these things for the last ten years. It doesn’t mean we are there yet. The position of women in our society is still not acceptable. Still, a lot of things need to happen. Economic progress, while it’s wonderful, we are not sure that equitable development, equitable growth is taking place. This “trickle-through” is not really effectively taking place yet. That’s something important we need to pay attention to. We cannot leave large sections of our societies behind, and I don’t like measurements that talk about GDP and stuff like that because it hides a lot of inequalities which you have to pay attention to.
We witness a great rise in the African civil-society, and that is changing the game, really. That is something very important in Africa. Mainly two forces are underpinning this, young people – half of African people are below 19 years old. It is a continent of young people, and those young people are not like us. They are better educated, better informed, they are connected. And that is changing the landscape in Africa. Those young people have no respect to anybody. That is really important. The other development as well is African women. African women are amazing. According to the ILO statistics, African women are really the pillar of the African economy. Seventy-five percent of our people are involved in agriculture, and agriculture is done by women, not by men. Kids, schools, food, house, et cetera, all that is done by women. Men, maybe work a little bit, but mainly we dance, drink and occasionally also rape women. This is an issue really with us in Africa, and it is very important now to see the rise of women organizations and the way the narrative is changing in Africa, which is really important. These two forces, youth and women, I believe are what’s going to change Africa. Just watch, I mean you see we have 54 countries. We have two women presidents at the moment, just compare performance. You will see how we fare better when we have women really engaged in leadership roles. That’s very important also for us.
We’re not out of the woods yet. We are still struggling, but the map is clear ahead of us. The most important issue ahead of us now is regional economic integration. Africa cannot continue to be 54 disconnected, little countries. We’re going to go nowhere. We cannot compete in this world. Nobody owes us anything. We have to earn our living. Africa is a rich continent. It’s a very rich continent, and really there is no, no reason at all to have hungry people or poor people in Africa. It is our mismanagement of our economies, our mismanagement of our politics, is really what is holding us back. It’s nobody else, and I hate it when people start to talk about colonialism. I say look, the United States was a colony. Everybody was a colony at some time, but people get up, dust off themselves and get going, and that’s what we need to do in Africa. It’s amazing. You can see a country like Cape Verde, whose president won our prize recently. A country with no natural resources, nothing, and still they managed to take the country out of the list of Least Developed Countries in Africa, second country in Africa to leave the list of Least Developed Countries. Why? Because you had good leadership. You had good governance. That’s exactly what we need, and what we have to campaign for. And we need to develop this sort of policies. Without the freedom of movement of goods, people and capital across Africa, we’ll always remain sub-scale, little countries. It is much cheaper to move goods from China to West Africa than moving goods from East Africa to West Africa. African trade is like 11-12 percent. How can we go forward if we are not trading with ourselves? This is a world for giants. You have the United States here, you have the European Union here, you have China there, India there. We cannot sit at the table, we cannot have a voice, we cannot influence things if we remain 54 little, disconnected countries which are not trading with each other, not dealing with each other. We need really to break these borders. It’s ridiculous. The funny thing is that everybody in Africa agrees. Every single president in Africa signed on regional economic integration. All those presidents, they formed RECs, the regional organizations to achieve this. But why is it not happening? We don’t know. We keep asking. Why is it not happening? We have all this organization, structures to achieve that. It still is not happening. Where is the beef? Where is the food on the table? Why aren’t we doing it? So we really need to move from just talking. Next month we’re going to celebrate 50 years of the African Union, and I always ask, “Where is the union in the African Union?”
We have always been campaigning for the issue of governance and how important public governance is for all of us. One part of that narrative unfortunately just goes unheard. We cannot have good governance – we cannot have good public governance – without good governance also in the private sector. Just think about this. When people talk about corruption in Africa, people talk about some corrupt presidents in Africa or leaders in Africa, nobody answers the question, those presidents are bribing themselves? Bribery is a crime committed by at least two consenting adults. Why do you always blame the woman? Where is the other guy? For each corrupt official, there are at least a dozen corrupt businesspeople. Why are you not shining the light on that side? I think we need to demand also good corporate governance, good governance in the private sector. That’s important. And that is not limited to the crime of bribery. Actually, of the illicit transfer of funds taking place in Africa about five or six percent is bribery money. The 95% which nobody talks about is very interesting. This is transfer pricing, corporates avoiding to pay taxes in Africa, mispricing, some of this of course criminal monies, et cetera, there is a huge amount of money leaving Africa every year. This is about 10 times the amount of aid Africa is receiving. So we need to ask the question, what is happening exactly here? Why is nobody talking about this? Few hundred billion of dollars leaving Africa every year. Where is it going? What is happening? Why aren’t we able to trace this money? Why are we not able to shine a light over that form of corruption? And actually that form of corruption is practiced by very, very honorable people. These are the chairmen and chief executives of our major corporations. And we need to ask those people, “How can you guys look at the eyes of your children knowing what you’re doing?” I think it’s time really for people also to raise that issue. We’ve had enough of all this rubbish, of this nonsense. They had the financial crisis. You felt the pain of the financial crisis here a few years ago, which again in my view was a result of bad governance – bad corporate governance on the part of the financial institutions, and nobody raised the question there about what is the fiduciary duty of the directors of all these institutions, nothing happened there. And of course bad legality framework and everybody went off scot-free. I think it’s time now to really move forward, and we stop all this nonsense. That’s essential not only for us in Africa, essential also for you, because it also comes back and bites you. So that’s something we ought to be united and really fighting for, a much more transparent world. We are not at all anti-business. I am a businessman. We are for business. Business creates job, creates prosperity. But also business needs to be transparent and also needs to be honest. And still you can make money, we are not against that.
Africa is involved in wonderful relationships with the whole world. I must mention here our friend President Lula; he has been to Africa 38 times. A true friend of Africa – 38 times. This is a wonderful form of relationship. Of course we’re developing other relationships, with China, with India, with a lot of other people. It is good for Africa to have many friends. And we of course demand that our new friends in the East should start from where our friends in the West ended, not from where they started. So we hope also those people observe good manners. As for the United States, Africans feel a little bit uneasy because what we have been witnessing is a gradual and continuous United States retreat from Africa, and we don’t understand that. The United States has been a great friend of Africa all these years, and the moment when Africa found itself and started to move up, we found the United States is really disengaging, to be frank. As friends we have to be frank with each other. We feel a little bit strange. Why are you guys disengaging with Africa? As United States administration I don’t know, United States business is disengaging. Wherever I go in Africa I see Indian companies, I see Chinese companies, Turkish companies, Brazilian companies. It is very rare to see American companies other than Coca-Cola of course who has been always there, and some oil companies. But American business in general is retreating, and American government itself is retreating. We found that very strange, you know what? Because we think we gave you a wonderful gift. We gave you one of our sons to come and help you move forward, and for this to happen on the watch of our son in the White House is strange for us. Unfortunately I don’t have his phone number, but if any of you have his phone number please just call him and say, “Hello, your parents say ‘Don’t forget us.’ We really love you.” And this is not about aid or about money, we know you have some hard times here with all the issues going with the Congress and other issues you have here. What we want is your love. We want a little bit of love, so Mr. Obama just come and give us a hug every now and then, and we’ll really appreciate that.
At the end I just really wish to say, honestly I am really humbled for this wonderful evening and for the honor you bestowed on me. I’m really humbled. I don’t think at all I deserve all this, but thank you very much. Anytime I’m given a prize I’m going to take it. Thank you.
