Mo Ibrahim
Mo Ibrahim
Dr Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahimis a Sudanese-British mobile communications entrepreneur and billionaire. He worked for several other telecommunications companies before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries. After selling Celtel in 2005 for $3.4 billion, he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to encourage better governance in Africa, as well as creating the Mo Ibrahim Index, to evaluate nations' performance. He is also a member of the Africa Regional Advisory Board of...
NationalitySudanese
ProfessionBusinessman
CountrySudan
Almost every country in Africa has now instituted multi-party democracy.
Sudan has been an experiment that resonated across Africa: if we, the largest country on the continent, reaching from the Sahara to the Congo, bridging religions, cultures and a multitude of ethnicities, were able to construct a prosperous and peaceful state from our diverse citizenry, so too could the rest of Africa.
Literacy in Tunisia is almost 100%. It's amazing - no country in the region or even in Asia can match Tunisia in education.
Increasing extremism - across Africa and the world - must be understood in the context of the failure of our leaders properly to manage diversity within their borders.
In a world of growing food demand, Africa is home to two-thirds of the world's unexploited arable land.
The African Development Bank is one of the most aggressive advocates of regional integration.
I left Sudan when I was 25 or 26 years old. If I had stayed, I would never have ended up being an entrepreneur. You can have the qualities, but if you don't have the environment, you just wither away. It's like a fish: take it out of water, it will not survive.
I never had a doubt that I wanted to do engineering.
I never set out really to build a financial empire or to be a wealthy man.
I'm uncomfortable, frankly, with the hype about Africa. We went from one extreme... to, like, Africa now is the best thing after sliced bread.
I need to be free, to speak the unspeakable. You can't do that in office.
Not any amount of aid is going to move Africa forward.
It was a no-brainer that the cellular route would be a great success in Africa.
Everywhere in Africa, you see Indian, Chinese, Brazilian businesses. Other than Coca Cola and the oil companies, it is very rare to see American businesses.