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
Mo Ibrahim quotes about
I am not a politician. I am not in politics. I'm just a citizen.
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.
Remember, 2000 was the year of the dot-com bust. The telecom industry lost about $2 trillion in market capital at that time.
Young people, all too often, find their interests overlooked and their voices ignored.
If we cannot accurately measure poverty, we surely cannot accurately measure our efforts to tackle it.
Many African people are smarter than me - kids who could have been better. I have no claim for genius.
Far from being hopeless, Africa is full of hope and potential, maybe more so than any other continent. The challenge is to ensure that its potential is utilised.
For citizens to become fully engaged in holding their leadership to account, accurate information is required to see where action is needed, to measure the results of policies and programmes, to build support for courageous decisions and to consolidate political legitimacy.
Look at the international bodies that came out of U.N. - international, publicly funded bodies that neither you or I know their names, because they are completely outdated and still publicly funded because there are no sunset clauses.
All we hear about Africa in the West is Darfur, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, as if that is all there is.
The Zimbabwean people, like everyone else, have a right to live in freedom and prosperity and to select their leaders through fair and democratic elections.
In a world of growing food demand, Africa is home to two-thirds of the world's unexploited arable land.
Mexico established a unique three-part governing system shared by the government, the information commission and civil society organisations.
Mobile phones play a really wonderful role in enabling civil society. As well as empowering people economically and socially, they are a wonderful political tool.