Mo Ibrahim

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

SOPHIE: Now if asked about prizes given to notable individuals, you might mention the Nobel Peace Prize or the Booker Prize, but there is an annual award that totally dwarfs them all financially.

Mo Ibrahim, mobile phone entrepreneur

The Mo Ibrahim Award for Good Governance goes to a recent leader of an African country who is judged to have run an honest, effective and democratic administration, and the winner gets $5 million.

The prize was set up by a man who made a vast fortune from his mobile phone business, establishing networks across the African continent.

Mo Ibrahim, welcome to the programme this morning.

Thank you very much for coming in. You have been named last week as �the most powerful black man in Britain� - yet, with all due respect, an awful lot of people would never have heard of you. What do you make of that title?

MO IBRAHIM: I wouldn�t have heard of myself actually. (laughter) It�s totally surprising and�because I think we are used to the culture of celebrities. I am not a celebrity, but I guess the judge probably to meas... to try to measure influence by, by...

SOPHIE: Absolutely.

MO IBRAHAM: ... by what people are doing or the fact of life of other people maybe.

SOPHIE: You have had though a fascinating life story. I mean you were born in Sudan. You are now a British National. You came to Britain when you were a student, didn�t you?

MO IBRAHIM: Yuh.

SOPHIE: And you, as I understand it, effectively led the way in mobile phones. I mean you had that idea way before anyone else. The 1970s, wasn�t it?

MO IBRAHIM: That was my subject for my Masters and PhD. I was a researcher. I was an academic clinician before I saw the light and went into the industry. I was Technical Director of British Telecom mobile phone arm.

SOPHIE: But you led the team, didn�t you, who...

MO IBRAHIM: Yes, I was the...

SOPHIE: ... designed Cellnet, which is now, everyone will know as O2.

MO IBRAHIM: It�s O2 now, yes. And then I launched MSI, which is a consulting and software. We actually designed and planned probably half the GSMA networks in Europe.

SOPHIE: Extraordinary. And Celtel was your big company that you...

MO IBRAHIM: After that, yes.

SOPHIE: ... you set up in Africa 1997. At that time what 2 million people had mobile phones?

MO IBRAHIM: Only 2 million people. Actually...

SOPHIE: Out of what, more than 900 million?

MO IBRAHIM: 900 million people, yes. Africa didn�t have any telecom infrastructure. It�s a vast continent and extremely disconnected.

SOPHIE: And by the time you sold it, I mean 200 million people had them and that number is obviously rising?

MO IBRAHIM: It�s increasing.

SOPHIE: You have made an awful lot of money from that and you u... you have used that money, it is your own money, to set up this prize: the Mo Ibraham Foundation and the Prize for Good Governance in Africa. What is it that you wanted to achieve with this?

MO IBRAHIM: I really wanted to give back. An African boy who made good thanks to this country, my adopted country and I really wanted to give the money back and I had a number of choices - either to go and buy masses of blankets and baby milk and go to Darfur or to Congo.

That would have been very nice actually, but it�s just like an aspirin: it doesn�t deal with the problem. What I wanted to do is to look for a way to prevent further Darfurs, further failed states and the downside was in governance. We need to have good governance.

SOPHIE: But is the money... I mean $5 million, a huge amount of money, but is it actually going to encourage good leaders? You look at the problems that Africa has nowadays - Zimbabwe being one of them; the problems this year in Kenya, Somalia which I know comes bottom of your index.

Huge, huge problems that are going to take an awfully long time to solve. That money�s not going to make that difference, is it?

MO IBRAHIM: It�s not really the issue of the money. Somehow the money grabs the headlines. Our project really has a number of elements. Number one, we... we combine an index for governance. It�s the most comprehensive measure of�of governance - some 350 pages.

We just launched that two weeks ago where we measure and rank the performance of each African government - give to civil society to enable them to have conversation with the government. And for the governments as well as the agnostic tool. But what the prize meant is while we are looking critically at what is happening on the ground and we publish that, at the same time we want to celebrate the success in African leadership.

The problem, Sophie, is that when you ask anybody here about African leadership, people either mention Nelson Mandela or Mugabe. Somehow...

SOPHIE: And nothing in between.

MO IBRAHIM: ... something, nothing in between. Either we have the saint or we have the devil. And actually there�s a lot of good, successful African leaders. The leader who won our prize last year, Chissano - when we declared Chissano as the winner, people said, 'Oh Chissano who?' Nobody knew Chissano. But every man, woman and child in this country know Mugabe.

SOPHIE: But it�s, I mean it�s been...

MO IBRAHIM: So we need to celebrate. We need to celebrate success as well criticise failure, and that�s the balance...

SOPHIE: Because obviously it has been a terrible year. In terms of governance in Africa, there are notable countries where it has been appalling this year.

MO IBRAHIM: I think... Sophie, allow me. I think it has been a triumph for Africa. Look at it this way.

SOPHIE: How?

MO IBRAHIM: Look at it this way. I have two reasons to tell you that. First, our governance index shows that governance has improved in two thirds of the African countries. Remember we have 53...

SOPHIE: 53, absolutely.

MO IBRAHIM: ... 53 to improve. Second thing, what Kenya and Zimbabwe tells us? Tells us you can no longer steal an election in Africa. It�s finished. That is a wonderful progress.

Ten years ago, those guys would have won the elections and would have come here, knighted at Buckingham Palace, entertained by you here maybe and nothing... no problem.

SOPHIE: Mo Ibrahim, well you prize is being handed out, the second one of its kind tomorrow.

MO IBRAHIM: Yes.

SOPHIE: But thank you very much for coming in and joining us this morning.

MO IBRAHIM: Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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