He is little known in France, yet "Mo" Ibrahim is one of the most listened-to voices in Africa, and far beyond, when it comes to good governance and the fight against corruption. He's one of the most scathing voices, too. Don't be fooled by the 77-year-old's good-natured demeanor, affable smile and laughing eyes: he spares no one. Not governments or international institutions, not to mention major corporations, especially Western ones.
Mohamed Ibrahim is no stranger to the dark side of African business, with its big contracts and under-the-table arrangements. The engineer, born in Sudan, raised in Egypt and later trained in the UK where he obtained the nationality, founded Celtel, a pioneering mobile operator in Africa, in the 1990s. In 2005, he sold the company, which had become pan-African, for 3.4 billion dollars. He thus joined the world billionaires' club.
The following year, on the advice of his friend Bill Gates, he founded the Mo Ibrahim Foundation for Good Governance in Africa. It launched a prize of the same name, intended to reward the most virtuous former presidents each year... And it refuses to award it most of the time. In 2020, it was awarded to Niger's outgoing president, Mahamadou Issoufou, who was suspected by some of having allowed the coup against his successor in July 2023. The foundation also publishes an annual index of good governance on the continent, which has become a benchmark.
From a suite in Dubai, where he had come to take part in COP28 in December 2023, the philanthropist and president of the investment fund Satya Capital gave Le Monde his sharp, "neither Afro-optimistic nor Afro-pessimistic" view of governance issues in oil projects, whose reputation is sulfurous to say the least, and whose contribution to the fight against poverty is questionable.
I think this is very good news for Africa. First of all, we have 600 million people without electricity. How can we even talk about development when people don't have access to electricity? In Egypt, for example, that's half the population condemned to the stone age. This is unacceptable.
How can you have economic activity, medicine, education, if you don't have power? We're facing a very serious problem. People need to understand that development is very important.
Secondly, I'm really annoyed by the do-gooders sitting comfortably in the North and lecturing us in the South. Most of the gas produced in Africa goes to Europe. What's more, it wasn't us who sent all that into the atmosphere. Other people did, and continue to do so. On average, a North American emits 17 tons [of CO2 equivalent] a year. A European or Chinese 7 tons. A Ugandan 0.1 tons.
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