Dr. Mo’s prescription for Africa

Dr. Mo Ibrahim

LONDON–Dr. Mo Ibrahim made $3.4 billion on the sale of his mobile phone firm Celltel, which serves 15 African countries.  Now he wants to make Africa flourish as well, through the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.  It all comes down to leadership.

In a recent speech, he told of the year-long struggle to link Kinshasa and Brazzaville directly by microwave across the Congo River.

The foundation is setting up a strategy for Africans to hold their governments accountable with the annual Ibrahim Foundation index.

Between the two Congos, Ibrahim related that cell calls had to go from Kinshasa to Belgium to France and then to Brazzaville at a cost of $7 per minute.   Once he set up the microwave link, the cost plummeted and usage went up 60,000 percent in one week.

He says, “We have a rich continent, and poor people. After 50 years of independence, we can’t continue to blame the colonialists. We have been independent for 50 years. It is time for us to take responsibility.”

One step is fostering economic integration, which has proceeded in a halting fasihion under the African Union

“The Germans, French, British are,not very friendly with each other. 100 million people died in Europe in wars between those guys, yet they go and form this European Union,” said Ibrahim.

“For them to survive against the Indians, the Chinese, the United States. no European country has the scale to compete.They now negotiate as one bloc,” he added.

The African Union was more successful at the Copenhagen climate talks than previously because it did operate with a single economic strategy.  “There’s no way 53 tiny countries can compete with China, India and the United States,” he concludes.