Africa’s real challenge is not a shortage of capital, ideas or natural resources but quality leadership that can build institutions to foster sustainable development and shared prosperity. Twenty years after its founding, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation continues to work on better governance and evidence-led policies to steer the continent. Nathalie Delapalme (opposite) is in conversation with Omar Ben Yedder .
Twenty years ago, one of Africa’s most progressive thinkers, the Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim, launched his Foundation as part of a lifelong campaign to actively improve the quality of Africa’s leadership, especially in the political sphere.
He spelt out his beliefs in an article in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper when he wrote: “… unless you are ruled properly, you cannot move forward. Everything else is second. Everything.”
The Foundation has been his vehicle for working to bring about improved governance across Africa through various approaches. Perhaps the best known is the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, awarded to African leaders who delivered positive change and, importantly, left office peacefully at the end of their tenure.
But while the $5m cash prize may be the most headline-catching incentive, the Foundation’s Ibrahim Index of African Governance has been perhaps a more effective barometer for judging improvements in the way African countries are run. Published every two years, the Index assesses countries on over 90 indicators, grouped under four broad categories
that constitute overall governance: security and rule of law; participation, rights and inclusion; foundations for economic opportunity; and human development.
Recent geopolitical developments have made the index (the next edition will be published in October) even more pertinent. With the world fracturing into a larger number of competing regional and national spheres of interest, Africa’s development agenda has become a casualty. An increasing amount of funds once dedicated to development are being rechannelled into inflated defence budgets, anti-
migrant measures and subsidising the rising cost of living.
As the continent braces itself to these new realities, the quality of its governance may well determine not only its survival as a going concern but whether it can actually thrive in this new epoch.
Nathalie Delapalme, the Foundation’s Executive Director since 2010, has a very different interpretation. “The end of aid is not the end of the world for Africa,” she says. She points out that the annual ODA, which had been dwindling for a decade, is less than the amount of money the continent loses to illicit financial flows or tax loopholes, and less than what it receives in remittances.
She says that rather than bemoaning the shifting priorities of its benefactors, African leaders must rather ask how they can better harness the wealth their countries already possess. “The resources are there,” she argues. “The issue is making them work for Africa.”
Doing so will require stronger institutions, better policies and more effective governance, the very things the Foundation seeks to foster.
The value of the Index
Discussing issues raised in one of the Foundation’s recent publications, Financing the Africa We Want , she says: “It’s not so much a question of the amount of financial resources available as the need to define better processes to use them efficiently – one of them being the assessment and the mitigation of African risk. This is a key hurdle to overcome; another is the bankability of projects, and yet another is market size and continental integration.”
The report included thoughts from African Presidents, leaders of development finance institutions (DFIs) and international agencies focused on the continent.
It argues, for example, that given Africa’s dozens of national currencies, cross-border transactions remain costly and cumbersome. Initiatives such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System have begun reducing these costs, but greater financial integration will be essential if the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is to realise its full potential.
Governance is central to attempts to achieve any of this. However, the Foundation’s data indicates that after years of gains in education, healthcare and economic opportunity, progress has begun to stall, particularly since 2021. This is driven in part by the deterioration of security in some parts of the region.
These negative factors are self-reinforcing. Delapalme says that military interventions have become popular in countries where poor security and the inability of governments to deliver public services have deeply eroded trust in democratic institutions.
“There were warning signs in studies conducted by the Foundation. The Index was flashing red ahead of the coups. And those signs are not limited to the countries where the military has already taken over the government.”
Swapping out legislative processes for snappy decrees has not been the magic bullet, either, and those countries that have done so continue to grapple with social, economic and security challenges that spurred the interventions in the first place.
But the democratic process must not be merely holding elections. “If the democratically elected governments don’t deliver or don’t respect the principles of democracy, they’re bound to have these coups.”
This is where the Index can help out – by giving countries a third-party, impartial view of how they are faring on its indicators. Even when there is a red light, they can engage with it to understand why they are not doing as well as they think. But countries are also “interested in looking at why their neighbours are doing better,” Delapalme says. “It triggers a kind of competition, which is always useful.”
The Index also provides useful insights for investors. “Investors use it a lot,” Delapalme says. “There are a lot of banks that are repackaging it and selling it to their clients because it is a dashboard. Instead of just looking at Doing Business [the World Bank’s ranking of business environments, now discontinued], you have this kind of consolidated dashboard.”
For ordinary citizens, the Index provides a way to measure whether political commitments and public policies are translating into tangible improvements in their daily lives.
Given the cost of capital and the risk premium that countries face in the international money markets, Delapalme suggests that the Index can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of country risk by providing a broader and more evidence-based picture of governance performance. “We’ve been working on it with the rating agencies for some years now, along with the ongoing conversations and reflections on having an African rating agency.”
Delapalme insists that the Ibrahim Index is not intended to replace international rating agencies. “It is an index of African governance produced by an African foundation, but it is not an African index,” she says. “It is based on more than 50 different sources, most of them being recognised institutions with a strong reputation.”
Establishing an African credit rating agency is not about rejecting existing global agencies, but about improving transparency and ensuring African countries have a better understanding of how assessments are made. “It is about showing African governments how the process works and what indicators need to be followed.”
More broadly, the Foundation is also putting its weight behind efforts to reform the global financial architecture. Coming at the same time as other pressures, there seems to be a greater receptiveness to the African position that the system is not working and reforms are not merely necessary but essential.
Delapalme, however, says: “We really need a complete reset of the system.” She points to the failures in the re-allocation of $650bn in Special Drawing Rights created by the IMF in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We are still struggling to identify and define the right change in the allocation mechanisms to make sure that these additional SDRs go to the countries that need them,” she reflects.
The old institutions, Delapalme says, were created for a world that hardly resembles the one they are intended to oversee and must give way to the fresh thinking and approaches of newer, more nimble bodies. “The so-called multilateral system is not the whole of it,” she says. “There are the UN and Bretton Woods systems, and then there are alternatives, less western-originated.”
Partner, not recipient
That new paradigm must also include a rethink of Africa’s role. The continent must be viewed as a partner, rather than merely as a recipient of the world’s largesse. When it comes to climate change and the green transition, Africa ought to be seen coming to the table not only with something to receive, but with a lot to offer.
“There will be no green global economy without Africa’s green assets,” Delapalme stresses. The challenge, she says, is ensuring Africa captures the value created by these resources instead of repeating the historical model of exporting raw commodities while value addition takes place elsewhere. “We need to monetise these assets properly,” she says. “Not simply export them.”
That will mean moving beyond carbon credit transactions or mineral exports towards developing local processing industries, manufacturing capacity and climate-smart infrastructure capable of creating jobs and supporting industrialisation.
It also requires a shift in how climate negotiations are conducted. Global climate discussions have largely been driven by developed economies whose populations already enjoy universal access to electricity and basic infrastructure. Their priorities naturally centre on reducing emissions.
Africa’s priorities are different, however. Nearly half the continent’s population still lacks reliable access to electricity, while many countries continue to face major deficits in transport, housing and industrial infrastructure. “You can’t pretend to save the planet at the expense of its people,” Delapalme says.
Rather than forcing governments to choose between development and climate action, she believes the two objectives should and can reinforce one another. Climate adaptation, in the African context, means investing in resilient cities, climate-proof transport systems, renewable energy networks, low-carbon industries and climate-sustainable agriculture capable of supporting long-term economic growth.
As Africa takes on these big challenges, data will be an essential tool in measuring not only what has been achieved but also what remains to be done. With the publication of this year’s Index, the foundation will once again supply a trove of data, which Delapalme asserts is of critical importance to the continent’s agenda and aspirations. “You can’t have sound policies without sound data,” she says. “It’s like driving blind.”
According to Delapalme, Mo Ibrahim remains committed to the original task, even if recent developments around the world and in his native Sudan are testing his optimism.
If the central thesis holds that what Africa truly needs above all else is excellent leadership, then perhaps the most cheering indicator might be that Africa’s young people, trained at home and overseas, are willing to provide leadership at various levels and that should perhaps be reason enough to hope that the next two decades could be better than the last.
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Evidence-based guide to quality African leadership
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