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
The brain drain from Africa has been reversed.
What we need in Africa is balanced development. Economic success cannot be a replacement for human rights or participation or democracy... it doesn't work.
In the final analysis, finding a way to do clean business and not to pay bribes actually improves your bottom line.
I really don't have heroes in business; I never looked up at business people.
Before any investor goes into any country, he is looking for the exit door.
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.
Challenging vested interests requires a government's full commitment.
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.
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.
I came to the conclusion that unless you are ruled properly, you cannot move forward. Everything else is second. Everything.