Reports monitored by the Daily Observer indicate that Dr Mo Ibrahim arrived, yesterday in the Senegalese capital. From April 17 to 19,  the Chairman of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, accompanied by a high-level delegation of Foundation Board and Prize Committee members, will be sharing and collecting feedback on the  research, learning from the experiences of others, and strengthening partnerships with different sectors of Senegalese society to further national debate around governance.

The Foundation’s first official visit to the West African region comes at a time when the growing challenges of everyday life highlight the need for outstanding leadership.

 The high ranking delegation include  Dr Mo Ibrahim, Founder and Chairman Former Chairman of Celtel International ; HE Mary Robinson,  Board Member, Former President of the Republic of Ireland & former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ; Dr Mamphela Ramphele,  Board Member, Former Managing Director of the World Bank & former Chair of the UN’s Global Commission on International Migration ; Mme AÔcha Bah Diallo, Member of the Prize Committee Former Guinean Minister of Education & Special Adviser to the Director-General of UNESCO. From Dakar, the delegation will proceed to Accra, Ghana.

It could be recalled that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched in October 2006 and is committed to supporting great African leadership. . It was founded by Mo Ibrahim, one of Africa’s most successful business entrepreneurs, and has the support of a number of world leaders, including Kofi Annan, Alpha  Oumar KonarÈ, Nelson Mandela, and Amartya Sen.  The Foundation aims to stimulate debate around, and improve the quality of, governance in Africa.

Starting last year in 2007, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation will publish each year the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the world’s first comprehensive ranking of sub-Saharan African nations according to governance quality, developed at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, under the guidance of the Foundation Board.

The Ibrahim Index has been created in recognition of the need for comprehensive and quantifiable methods for civil society to measure governance quality in sub-Saharan Africa. The Ibrahim Index assesses national progress in five key areas, which together constitute a holistic definition of good governance: safety and security; human development; sustainable economic development; participation and human rights; and rule of law, transparency and corruption.

The Foundation also confers the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the largest annually awarded prize in the world. The Prize Committee, c haired by Kofi Annan, awards US$5 million to a former African Head of State who has demonstrated excellence in leadership during their time in office. In October 2007, Joaquim Chissano, the former President of Mozambique, became the inaugural Ibrahim Laureate.