The prize committee has always emphasized that it is not just one’s posture for talking peace,good governance and winning inflation trophies that wins the award;it is a proper transformation of these ‘ideals’ in the lives of your people with the little you have- Cape Verde’s was partly due to TOURISM-
Besides, remember one of the reasons cited by the Mo Ibrahim Prize committee when the prize escaped former Ghanaian President Kufour was his inability to have his ‘success’ transform the lives of Ghanaians. Others also suggested it was the gold ‘medal’ he awarded himself that was his nemesis.
More from the BBC-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15241128
Former Cape Verde President Pedro Verona Pires has been awarded this year’s $5m (£3.2m) Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa.
The prize committee said Mr Pires, who stepped down in August, had helped make the archipelago off the West African coast a “model of democracy, stability and increased prosperity”.
The prize is supposed to be awarded each year to a democratically elected leader who has voluntarily left office.
There has been no winner for two years.
The committee said there had been no suitable candidate.
The $5m award, given over 10 years followed by $200,000 a year for life, is the world’s most valuable individual prize.
The previous winners are Botswana’s President Festus Mogae and Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano.
Sudan-born telecoms entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim says the prize is needed because many leaders of sub-Saharan African countries come from poor backgrounds and are tempted to hang on to power for fear that poverty awaits them when they leave office.
‘Personal integrity’
Mr Pires played a key role in the fight against Portuguese colonial rule and became prime minister at independence in 1975.
He became president in 1991 and stepped down after two terms, rejecting calls to change the constitution to remain in office, like several African leaders have done.
Committee head Salim Ahmed Salim praised his “humility” and “personal integrity”.
“Dismissing outright suggestions that the constitution could be altered to allow him to stand again, he said: ‘This is a simple matter of faithfulness to the documents that guide a state of law’.”
With Mr Pires not standing, opposition leader Jorge Carlos Fonseca won the August elections against Manuel Inocencio Sousa from the governing African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAIVC).
Cape Verde – an Atlantic archipelago of 10 islands – has experienced significant economic growth in recent years, partly due to a boom in tourism.
It is now classed by the United Nations as a middle-income country.
But unemployment and poverty are still high, forcing many people to emigrate.
Some 700,000 Cape Verdeans live abroad, more than the 500,000 at home, official statistic show.- BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15241128