Foundation to engage in dialogue in West Africa in support of great African leadership

By Sheriff Bojang JRN

Foundation to engage in dialogue in West Africa in support of great African leadership Dr Mo Ibrahim, Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, will be visiting Dakar from April 17 to 19 with a high-level delegation of Foundation Board and Prize Committee members. From Dakar, the delegation will proceed to Accra, Ghana.
 
During the trip, the Foundation will be sharing and collecting feedback on its research, learning from the experiences of others, and strengthening partnerships with different sectors of Senegalese society to further national debate around governance.
 
The Foundation’s first official visit to the West African region comes at a time when the growing challenges of everyday life highlight the need for outstanding leadership.
 
The delegation, which will be arriving on Thursday 17 April for the two day visit, will include:
 
·                     Dr Mo Ibrahim – Founder and Chairman
Former Chairman of Celtel International
·                     Dr Mamphela Ramphele – Board Member
Former Managing Director of the World Bank & former Chair of the UN’s Global Commission on International Migration
·                     HE Mary Robinson – Board Member
Former President of the Republic of Ireland & former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
·                     Mme Aïcha Bah Diallo – Member of the Prize Committee
Former Guinean Minister of Education & Special Adviser to the Director-General of UNESCO
 
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched in October 2006 and is committed to supporting great African leadership. . It was founded by Mo Ibrahim, one of Africa’s most successful business entrepreneurs, and has the support of a number of world leaders, including Kofi Annan, Alpha Konaré, Nelson Mandela, and Amartya Sen.  The Foundation aims to stimulate debate around, and improve the quality of, governance in Africa.
 
Starting last year in 2007, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation will publish each year the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the world’s first comprehensive ranking of sub-Saharan African nations according to governance quality, developed at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, under the guidance of the Foundation Board.
 
The Ibrahim Index has been created in recognition of the need for comprehensive and quantifiable methods for civil society to measure governance quality in sub-Saharan Africa. The Ibrahim Index assesses national progress in five key areas, which together constitute a holistic definition of good governance: safety and security; human development; sustainable economic development; participation and human rights; and rule of law, transparency and corruption.
 
The Foundation also confers the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the largest annually awarded prize in the world. The Prize Committee, c haired by Kofi Annan, awards US$5 million to a former African Head of State who has demonstrated excellence in leadership during their time in office. In October 2007, Joaquim Chissano, the former President of Mozambique, became the inaugural Ibrahim Laureate.
 
During the visit, Dr. Mo Ibrahim will give a press conference at Hotel Meridien President, on April 18 2008 from 9am to 11am.
 
The press conference will be followed immediately by a roundtable event on the Ibrahim index on governance, organised in conjunction with CODESRIA. In the evening the Foundation will host a reception for policy-makers and civil society at the Meridien President Hotel.
 
Concerning his visit to Senegal, Mo Ibrahim says: “We are delighted to be visiting Senegal to further develop dialogue around the Foundation’s vision of supporting great African leadership. We hope to create partnerships to help facilitate and promote the Senegalese contribution to the governance and leadership debates currently taking centre stage in Africa.”
 
ENDS
 
For more information, or to arrange interview opportunities during the visit, please contact:
Risha Chande, Media Relations Officer, +44 20 7535 5063; chande.r@moibrahimfoundation.org
 
Amie Joof: Famedev Executive Director:
(+221) 33 867 55 98/ 77 642 89 83/77 632 06 60/77 722 06 18.
Email: famedev@gmail.org