Ibrahim, Mo

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Mo Ibrahim

1946—

Telecommunications executive, philanthropist

Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who earned his considerable fortune by building some of the first telephone networks in sub-Saharan Africa. As the founder of Celtel International, Ibrahim was a pioneer in the international mobile-communications sector, and after his company was acquired for a stunning $3.4 billion, the London-based tycoon established an eponymous foundation that bestows the annual Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. "Africa is rich—really rich," he told journalist Michael Wines in the New York Times. "It's really a wonderful continent. What we need to do now is enforce good governance, and it's happening, perhaps not as quickly as I would like. All we need to do is push."

Ibrahim was born in 1946 into a family of Nubian heritage, an ethnic group whose traditional homelands stretch from southern Egypt into northern Sudan. He grew up in Cairo, Egypt, where his father worked as a clerk for a cotton-trade organization. The family, which numbered seven in all, lived in a small apartment that was often stifling in the heat of the warmer months. During his childhood Ibrahim dreamed of becoming a scientist like his role model, Albert Einstein, but chose to study engineering when he entered the University of Alexandria on a partial scholarship.

Developed Telecommunications Networks

In 1971, at the age of twenty-five, Ibrahim began an internship with the International Telecommunications Union, a regulatory body located in Geneva, Switzerland. On his way to see a movie, he took a taxi and was enthralled by the driver's ability to communicate with the dispatcher back at the taxicab company's headquarters. This sparked his interest in mobile communications, an emerging field at the time. Mobile networks relied on radio-frequency signals—as the two-way radio in the cab did—rather than actual wires, as telephone lines required.

Ibrahim went on to earn a graduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bradford in west Yorkshire, England, and then a doctorate in mobile communications from the University of Birmingham. He went to work for British Telecom and became a technical director at Cellnet, a joint venture between British Telecom and a private investment group that was founded in 1985 to capture the coming British mobile-phone market. He grew weary of corporate politicking, however, and quit in 1989 to become a telecommunications consultant.

Ibrahim's company was called Mobile Systems International, or MSI, and its first office was the dining-room table of the London home he shared with his wife and two children. Over the next decade, MSI helped build mobile-phone networks in other countries for major operators, and became so successful that it was acquired by Marconi plc, a British telecommunications company whose original corporate roots were in the General Electric Company of Britain and the pioneering Italian radio manufacturer whose name it still carried. The sale to Marconi in 2000 enriched not only Ibrahim, but many of his employees as well, to whom he had given shares of stock as bonuses.

Ibrahim's other company was Celtel, which began as MSI-Cellular Investments and was spun off into a stand-alone entity in 1998. By that point, Celtel was becoming the leading mobile phone service provider in sub-Saharan Africa, an area written off as unfeasible by most other companies. Many larger providers had eagerly ventured into the rest of Africa, but judged this part of the continent too impoverished to make investment in building a network there financially worthwhile. Ibrahim believed otherwise, knowing that landlines were still scarce in this part of the world. Celtel moved forward with the plan, and within a few years was providing mobile phone service in fifteen African countries, from Chad to Zambia. Ibrahim's idea proved so profitable that in 2005 a Kuwaiti company acquired Celnet for $3.4 billion.

Established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation

Ibrahim began his second career as a philanthropist in earnest in 2006 when he established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation with his new fortune, estimated at well over $1 billion. Its main focus was to improve the lives of Africans by encouraging good governance and leadership. Working with world-renowned economists and political scientists, the foundation created the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which ranks the forty-eight countries of sub-Saharan Africa according to various factors, such as human-rights abuses and the level of political corruption. From that, Ibrahim created a somewhat unusual prize designed to reward the best leaders in Africa. Known as the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, its inaugural recipient was Mozambique's Joaquim Chissano in 2007. Once a Marxist who played a key role in his country's break with its longtime colonial master, Portugal, Chissano became Mozambique's second president during its long and bloody civil war. He worked to end the conflict and bring stability and prosperity back to the country before stepping down in 2005.

The Ibrahim Prize awarded Chissano $5 million over a ten-year period, then another $200,000 annually until death. It was the most generous prize in philanthropy—more than three times more than the $1.5 million associated with the Nobel Prize—and was established to encourage African leaders to leave office rather than cling to power. Ibrahim explained the impetus behind the award in the numerous interviews he gave when Chissano's win was announced. Unlike the heads of state of most Western countries, African leaders do not anticipate generous book deals when they leave office, nor can they expect lucrative lecture tours. In most cases they receive a woefully small pension, and in a few cases have not even been able to live in the capital city any longer because of their reduced financial circumstances. Such a future, Ibrahim argued, encourages corruption and compels some to remain in office by any means possible, including suspending the constitution.

At a Glance …

Born Mohamed Ibrahim in Eshket, Sudan, in 1946; son of a clerk; married to Hania Fadl (a radiologist); two children. Education: University of Alexandria, BS; University of Bradford, MS in electrical engineering; University of Birmingham, PhD in mobile communications, c. 1983.

Career: British Telecom, technical manager, 1983-89; Mobile Systems International (MSI), founder, 1989, and president, 1989-2000; MSI-Cellular Investments/Celtel International, founder, 1998, and president, 1998-2005; established Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 2006.

Memberships: Mo Ibrahim Foundation, board member; London Business School, member of Africa Regional Advisory Board.

Addresses: Home—London, England. Office—Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 3rd Fl. North, 35 Portman Sq., London W1H 6LR, England.

There were only a handful of African leaders—about seven in all—who were eligible for the award. According to the strict criteria associated with the Prize, those under consideration were limited to leaders who had left office within the past three years and had been democratically elected to their office. Some observers criticized the Ibrahim Prize, contending that it provided little incentive to stop corruption and abuse of office, because most leaders had access to much more than $5 million over the course of their time in office. Ibrahim termed this argument "cynical," and told Helen Coster in Forbes that such a view "assumes that all people coming to office are thieves." In an interview with Emily Flynn Vencat in Newsweek he explained that because he had earned his fortune in Africa, he felt duty-bound to return the favor. "I believe that us business people who have made money in Africa have a responsibility to help bring good governance there."

In 2008 Ibrahim made history when he appeared on the newest "Rich List" rankings from Forbes magazine. Along with a South African mining billionaire and a Nigerian whose fortune was in sugar, Ibrahim was among the first black Africans ever to appear on the list of the world's wealthiest citizens. In an earlier issue of Forbes he was asked what he thought about the millions of Africans whose lives were marked—and prematurely curtailed, oftentimes—by unimaginable hardships. His own good fortune, he told Coster, was "just a matter of luck. I managed to get education. I am not better than any of those unfortunate people."