oseph Conrad’s 1902 novella Heart of Darkness infamously depicted an African continent that was bestial, treacherous and savage. More than a century later Conrad’s characterisation of “the place of darkness” still has tragic resonance, and has at times been replicated and reinforced in the Western public’s collective imagination, not solely through literary and artistic works but also in the political realm.

Current affairs publications are littered with reports of horror and tragedy in Somalia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and the Darfur region in Sudan, and the multiple accounts of good in African nations are buried beneath a never-ending portrayal of a Sub-Saharan dystopia. The broadest stereotypical snapshots of African politics—especially political leadership—revolve around images of corruption, incompetence, venal human rights abuses and a myriad of impoverished countries governed with an iron fist by a series of undemocratic strongmen.

Joaquim Chissano however, as “the antithesis of the stereotypical African Big Man”, defies such a hackneyed and dismal caricature. The President of Mozambique from 1986 to 2005, Chissano—a former rebel with the Mozambique Liberation Front—earned extensive plaudits for his role as peacemaker and nation-healer. Chissano is credited with a pivotal role in the conclusion, reconciliation and rehabilitation of his country from a brutal 16-year long civil war. He has been feted by Kofi Annan as “a powerful voice for Africa on the world stage.” Chissano oversaw Mozambique’s transition from a Marxist system to a mixed economy, steering the economy to an average growth rate of around 8% during his leadership.

This October, Chissano was awarded the prize for ‘Achievement in African Leadership’; a $5 million dollar reward, with a $200,000 annual lifetime pension thereafter. He has been commended as “a role-model not just for Africa, but for the rest of the world” by the prize’s philanthropic benefactor Mo Ibrahim—a Sudanese entrepreneur whose pan-African mobile phone company Celtel was sold for $3.4 billion in 2005 with over ten million customers covering fourteen sub-saharan countries. Ibrahim’s personal principle of generating development in Africa through the private sector—allied to his $100 million personal fortune—has been used to create the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The Foundation has been described excitedly by some as an African Nobel Prize. Touted as an African solution to an African problem, the Foundation has the support of political heavyweights such as Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Kofi Annan.

The ‘African problem’ as defined by the Foundation is a lack of good governance. Diagnosing deficiency in the interaction between Africa’s leaders and their citizens, Ibrahim believes that Africa can change the archetype of the corrupt despot through the strengthening of its institutions and a continual revolution of the political character of its highest politicians. The solution is in part this Award, which will annually honour the African leader with the greatest democratic credentials from all Heads of State who have stood down from their posts within the last three years. In addition, Ibrahim has established an Index of African Governance; a league table ranking every Sub-Saharan country according to the ability of each nation-state to provide goods to its inhabitants. More comprehensive than any previous objective system, the Ibrahim Index aims to measure governance against 58 individual criteria within six key area: Safety and Security; Rule of Law; Transparency and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Development; and Human Development. By making this information annually updated and publicly accessible, the Foundation’s ambition is to shine “a light on governance in Africa… The Ibrahim Index is a tool to hold governments to account and frame the debate about how we are governed”. This year, Africa’s three ‘best’ governments were Mauritius, Seychelles and Botswana.

Beyond the swamp of excitable and self-congratulatory journalism that greeted the award ceremony last month, complaints and criticism have surfaced. Some cynics have argued that corruption is a key factor in the failure of African leaders to honour their democratic commitments, and that the curse of kleptocracy is unhindered by the Award. The incentives of $5 million do not compare to the enormous sums through float through African economies. Alternatively, indignant observers have deemed it patronizing at best, and simply racist at worst, that African leaders need bribes to be honest in leadership. Ibrahim’s policy of financially incentivising integrity attracts criticism from those, like British academic Selim Nasruddin, who feel that “What you are effectively saying is the only way to keep African leaders on the straight and narrow is to bribe them, that their main motivating factor is money rather than a sense of civic duty. Would such a prize be offered elsewhere?” This argument replicates the reaction of many who deem Western aid and intervention in domestic politics to be demeaning to its recipients, depriving human agency. Ibrahim is certainly sensitive to these complaints; in fact, the primary objective of the Foundation’s press machine is to trumpet the Award as an African solution to the peculiar African problem that “what happens to a good African leader after he leaves office? Nothing. It is a tough life. Suddenly you take away the mansion and the presidential car, you take away everything and, you know, the state pension is actually very, very small. Don’t you think we are really creating a situation where we are putting people under unreasonable pressure to stay in office?” Rather than a bribe, the prize is a sensible solution to remove inevitable temptation. Dispassionate analysis could of course consider all prizes to be incentives, and therefore as bribery. Any incentive, be it fiscal or merely prestige, provides an additional motivation to boost performance.

There are also broader, fundamentally political concerns. The good governance agenda has received significant criticism among political academics as the tool of a Western hegemony that forces its liberal democratic agenda onto unreceptive states through conditional aid and political exhortation. The fear that a state framework is exported wholesale and imposed on countries regardless of their existing cultural and historical capacity to absorb it is captured by one of America’s primary political theorist Samuel P. Huntington. In his 1997 work ‘Clash of Civilizations’, Huntington claims simply that “What is universalism to the West is imperialism to the rest”. While this argument can tend towards creating mutually incompatible, monolithic entities of ‘the West’ and ‘the Rest’ which does not recognise the many levels of diversity which it claims to be concerned about, it does raise significant concerns about whether international efforts to raise standards of governance in developing countries does more harm than good.

It also leads to the question of whether the ‘Achievement in African Leadership’ really is the much-heralded African solution, or whether it is another expression of the liberal dreaming of an international oligarchy. In many ways, does it matter if the rule of law and free and fair elections are of purely Western origin? Does it matter if Africa becomes an experimental lab to identify the chemical formula for good government if this is how we find the solution? As philosophical and political conundrums go, this far exceeds the capacity of a 1500 word-count to resolve, but critics of good governance bring realistic concerns to the debate which the Ibrahim Foundation should not fail to consider. By creating a never-ending utopian wish-list, the good governance agenda can overload fragile systems, creating unsustainable demands and pressures. The Ibrahim Index, by offering 58 interactive and overlapping measurements of governance can claim to be comprehensive, but also exemplifies the fear of sustainability. The Award offers a top-down solution to the dilemma of good governance. It affects only a few, often isolated leaders, and any trickle-down effect through civil society will be minimal. As political scientist Piotr Sztompska so neatly summarises, “Building a house is not the same as establishing a home.” Quantifiable measurements and scientific tables can never capture or evaluate citizen satisfaction. The Foundation must also undertake efforts to strengthen and institutionalise democratic desires and capacities among grassroot levels of society.

Fundamentally however, little of this detracts from the positive impact that the Ibrahim Foundation will certainly have in supporting a more transparent and evaluative interpretation of political leadership in Africa. Leaders will be more susceptible to public scrutiny, and regardless of the financial impact of the prize, may be less tempted to avoid measures of accountability. Importantly two, the good work of Mo Ibrahim highlights the even better work of some African leaders like Joaquim Chissano, whose successes are so frequently overshadowed. As Ibrahim himself declares “What we are saying is forget about the bad apples. Some people must have done something good. We should look for a hero, and honour such a person.”