The establishment of Mo Ibrahim Foundation some six years ago with a mandate to   support “good governance and great leadership in Africa” was received with a considerable amount of excitement and expectations across the continent as the Foundation appeared to have targeted an area that Africa lacked the most.

What was controversial from the onset however was the Foundation’s introduction of annual good governance award (Ibrahim Prize) of US$5 million over a period of 10 years then US$200,000 annually after for a former African “Executive Head of State or Government…” There is a prize committee that decides the winner. The seven-member committee is chaired by Salim Ahmad Salim and its members include Mohamed ElBaradei and Graça Machel.

Now in its sixth year, only three former African presidents have won the award: Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano (2007), Festus Mogae of Botswana (2008) and Cape Verde’s Pedro de Verona (2011). The Foundation has also given ‘honorary laureate’ to Nelson Mandela (2007) and this year (2012) archbishop Desmond Tutu has been awarded ‘extraordinary prize’. There were no Ibrahim prize winners in 2009, 2010 and 2012 because no retired African head of state met the selection criteria.

It is time the Foundation reassessed the relevance of the award. Can you make bad a leader good by awarding good leadership? Does the Foundation really believe there is any African president out there on a ‘good governance’ mission in order to win the Mo Ibrahim prize when they retire? Were any of the past recipients incentivised by the prize or they were/are generally good leaders? Why is it that deserved winners have become scarce since the launch of the award? Are Nelson Mandela and archbishop Desmond Tutu not extraordinary leaders that can easily win any available award on any given day?

The lack of winners in 2009, 2010 and 2012 when the prize committee had could choose from a few retired head of states point to two probabilities: either the state of African leadership is very poor or the Foundation has raised the standards unrealistically high for a continent whose majority of countries only did away with dictatorship in the last two decades or so.

The foundation’s initiative to provide leadership training is commendable. This may, in the long term, yield some positive results for African nations and the continent as a whole. Yet financially rewarding a leader for being good at what their people elected them to do does not only defeat the whole notion of democracy, it also takes away power and responsibility from the electorate, who are meant to hold their leaders to account and demand service delivery.

The Foundation ought to realise that the award inadvertently promotes stereotype of African leadership as corruptible and greedy. Surely this is not the perception that the Foundation wants to promote? One would believe this defeats the Foundation’s own noble purpose of facilitating good governance and leadership on the continent.

On its website, the Foundation quotes the current European Union head, Jo?e Emmanuel Baroso: “Sustainable development requires states to be legitimate in the eyes of their citizens and to deliver the core functions of the state.”

Similarly, the Foundation ought to realise that supporting civic education efforts for the masses, civil society organisations and other non-governmental groupings on issues of governance, good leadership and democratic principles is crucial. The continent need more than well-trained leaders and good leadership awards to achieve good governance, it also requires engaged, capable and active citizens to hold their leaders into account and refuse mediocrity. Active citizens are the best moderators of good leadership and governance. This cannot be determined by a medal or cash prize.

Last September (2010) people in Mozambique capital, Maputo took to the streets in protest against their government’s planned increase of bread, water and electricity prices by 30%. ‘Police fired live bullets at protesters after demonstrators threw stones and blocked streets with burning tires’.

After few days of protesting, 13 dead bodies and 600 injured people, the Mozambique government backed down to the people’s pressure and reversed what the government had earlier called ‘irreversible’ the decision. The people of the Southern African country had ultimately triumphed against what they deemed as unjustified government policies.

Four months later, Algerians took to the streets in protest against their government for increasingly unaffordable living conditions in that country. According to Algerian government sources at least 4 people were killed and more than 800 other were injured. After several days of unrest, the government of the North African country succumbed to the people’s pressure and announced that it had resolved to cut taxes and import duties on ‘some staple foods’ in order to boost people’s purchasing power. People had triumphed.

Meanwhile, protests were also taking place in another Northern African country of Tunisia and Eastern African country of Tanzania. In Tanzania the country’s opposition (Chadema) party was protesting against the way in which a mayoral election in the city of Arusha had been conducted – ‘the city’s mayor was controversially elected’ in an election that Chadema boycotted after alleged violations of electoral rules by the country’s ruling party. Two people were killed and several others injured after the police fired live bullets.

In Tunisia it was the smallest of the sparks that ignited the inferno, which has ultimately brought down the government of President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali who had been in power for 23 years. A young fruit and vegetable vendor had his cart confiscated by police. The police were just doing what was hitherto a routine job. The young vendor reacted unusually: he set himself on fire in protest against job shortages and low wages in the country.

The young vendor’s predicament resonated with many Tunisians who were going through the same experience. They took to the streets to demand for jobs and better living conditions. After a failed curfew and a growing resistance by the Tunisian people, Ben Ali did the inevitable: he fled the country. People’s will had prevailed.

Four days before the Tunisia’s ousting of Ben Ali, I argued that the growing protests on the continent needed more attention as this was what would define African democracy and not the Sudanese referendum or the election standoff in Côte d’Ivoire. Countries like Tunisia, Tanzania and the post civil war Mozambique are never known for protests and ‘rioting’ of this magnitude.

What is happening here is that African are fed-up with Africa’s increasingly autocratic governments that only use people to ‘vote’ them into power and do nothing to develop their countries and uplift people’s living standards. Elections are only held to buy legitimacy and to attract aid from international community. Donors and international community are the indispensable constituents of Africa’s elected despots and not their people, the African voters. Africans are finally waking up. All these protests were unheard of only five years ago.

The ousting of Ben Ali is definitely a game changer in the Maghreb, and possibly in other Islamic countries outside Africa. Muammer Gaddafi’s condemnation of the Tunisia’s uprising should not be dismissed because he is a personal friend of Ben Ali, Gaddafi realise that time could be up for autocrats like him and many ‘elected’ despots on the continent.