The world has welcomed another batch of Nobel
Laureates for accomplishments in the sciences,
literature, and global peace. But there is
another prize, perhaps just as important, for
which there was no winner.
We are talking about the Mo Ibrahim Prize,
established by the Sudanese billionaire Mo
Ibrahim. The criteria for winning are listed
publicly on the prize website: You need to be a
democratically elected African head of state
that has left office in the last three years, and
demonstrated excellent leadership. If you meet
the criteria, you get a $5 million award, plus an
annual pension of $200,000 that kicks in after a
decade.
The point, of course, is to provide a financial
incentive for African leaders to shun corruption.
And yet, for the fourth time in its seven year
history, the awards committee was unable to
find a winner from any of Africa’s 50-plus
countries. Bravo to the Ibrahim prize for
holding high standards, even if that means no
grand ceremony.
So what happened? Well, for starters,
presidents and prime ministers need to actually
step down. Africa’s leaders are locked in a
marathon to see who can reign longest. The
leaders of Equatorial Guinea and Angola have
been in power for 34 years. Zimbabwe and
Cameroon have had the same men in charge for
33 and 30 years respectively. These and a
number of other African states are nominal
democracies, but they are essentially run by
dictators. Elections, if they’re held at all, tend
to be a sham, pockmarked by intimidation,
fraud, and violence.
More from CNN: Africa’s rocky road to
democracy
A number of indicators highlight the region’s
crisis of governance. On Freedom House’s
global map of freedom, Africa is the region
with the highest number of countries listed “not
free.” On Transparency International’s
Corruption Index, most African states are
shaded red, denoting graft, instead of yellow,
for least corrupt.
Now alongside all of these dismal rankings lie a
set of numbers singing a very different tune.
Six of the world’s ten fastest growing
economies from 2001 to 2010 were African.
According to Ventures Africa, the continent
now has 55 billionaires. Great strides have been
made in creating wealth and expanding
development. There have been advances in
education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation.
So, despite all of these gains, why is Africa so
far behind on good governance?
There are, of course, a number of decades-old
factors in play, but one of them is new, and
strikes us as an interesting one to highlight:
China.
For decades, NGO’s and Western countries
have tied aid money and trade to promises for
greater transparency among Africa’s countries.
But China has upended the system. Beijing is
known to give aid and sign trade deals with no
strings attached. Instead, its priority is to
extract commodities at the best possible price.
And that, in turn, has led to the commodities
boom which has fuelled growth in Africa.
More from GPS: Why Africa matters
According to a New York University study,
trade between China and Africa has risen from
$10 billion in 2000 to $166 billion in 2011, a
16-fold increase. China is now Africa’s largest
trade partner. And as we reported last week,
China’s total aid budget has surged as well,
from $1.7 billion in 2001, to more than $189
billion in 2011. A substantial chunk of that aide
goes to Africa.
In the short term, Africa’s leaders may rejoice
at having struck a good deal. They no longer
need to listen to Western criticism because
China and other countries, like Brazil and India,
are willing to trade, no-strings attached.
But Africa’s dictators should beware. All they
need to do is look north, to the Arab world, and
they will see what happens when leaders
suppress freedom and stick around too long.
Meanwhile, Africa’s young population – and it is
huge – is getting smarter, more connected, and
perhaps more likely, eventually, to rebel against
repression.