Sirleaf’s Mo Ibrahim award

FOR students of African political leadership specifically, and watchers of African politics in general, news of the selection of the immediate past president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as the winner of the 2017 Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership could not have come at a more auspicious time. Considering the chain of unfortunate events which ultimately culminated in the resignation of South African president, Jacob Zuma, on February 15, the honor bestowed on Ms. Sirleaf is a welcome relief from a sense of overpowering gloom.

The report is all the sweeter because Ms. Sirleaf is the first female winner of the prize, after the late Nelson Mandela (2007), Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano (2007), Festus Mogae of Botswana (2008), Cape Verde’s Pedro De Verona Rodrigues Pires (2011) and Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia (2014). Endowed by Sudanese- British billionaire Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, the prize was established in 2006 to “recognise and celebrate African executive leaders who, under challenging circumstances, have developed their countries and strengthened democracy and human rights for the shared benefit of their people, paving the way for sustainable and equitable prosperity.” According to information available on the home page of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Prize Committee comprises “eminent figures, including two Nobel Peace Price laureates.”

The committee’s citation on Ms. Sirleaf is quite eloquent on her qualifications for the Prize. Apart from extolling her demonstration of “exceptional and transformative leadership,” the citation praises her for having “endured imprisonment, exile, and personal risk on the road to leadership, and yet persevered in her demand for honest government for her people.” While it went on to single out her handling of the Ebola crisis in Liberia between 2014 and 2015, it reserved special kudos for Ms. Sirleaf’s management of the economy, noting that “From 2006 to 2014, before the Ebola crisis hit the country, the Liberian economy grew at an annual rate of over 7 per cent,” and that since 2006, the country (Liberia) is the only African country “to improve in every category and sub-category of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance.”

We join the people of Liberia, students of African leadership, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, feminists around the world, and other well-wishers in congratulating Ms. Sirleaf on this tremendous honour. For far too long, and contrary to all evidence, women in Africa have laboured under the nonsensical notion that they lack the temperament for politics and the stomach for a political fight. In becoming the first elected female Head of State in 2006, Ms. Sirleaf exploded the first prejudice, and in successfully confronting Liberia’s entrenched patriarchal forces throughout her tenure, she gave a lie to the second.

Ms. Sirleaf’s shining example is a challenge to the majority of African leaders to aspire to rise beyond mere politics into the realm of statesmanship. For Ms. Sirleaf, this honour complements a CV already shimmering with similar prestigious awards, including the 2011 Nobel Prize for Peace which she shared with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman. We wish her many more years of service to the people of Liberia, Africa and humanity.