Dan Banik and Mo Ibrahim discuss the drivers of poverty and underdevelopment on the African continent, what good leadership entails, and how African countries can make a stronger case for their priorities in the global climate debate.
Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British entrepreneur, founded one of the largest mobile phone companies that operated on the African continent. In 2006, he established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation with the goal of fostering improved governance. The foundation publishes The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which assesses governance performance in 54 African countries. It also awards the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership (worth $5 million) to African leaders who have successfully delivered security, health, education, and economic development to their constituents and have democratically transferred power to their successors.
Resources:
Host:
Professor Dan Banik, University of Oslo, Twitter: @danbanik  @GlobalDevPod
https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/
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Banik              I am so thrilled to have you on the show today Mo.
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Ibrahim          Thank you for having me. Thank you.
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Banik              There’s been so much talk about African development, a lot of major powers are now fighting for Africa’s attention, the geopolitics of it all. Everybody seems to be talking about Africa and yet hundreds of millions of people still struggle in terms of not having electricity. There is an abundance of natural resources, and yet there are lots of people living in poverty. So, despite all of the natural resources, despite all this attention, what do you think explains this continued poverty in large parts of the continent?
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Ibrahim          How much time have you got?
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Banik              A lot for you.
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Ibrahim          It is a long story. I mean you are absolutely correct; it is a very rich content which really is underpopulated. We have the same population like India, almost the same population like China and we are three times bigger than China size wise, at about seven-eight times maybe bigger than India size wise. We have all these resources much more than what China has, much more than what India has. We have a wonderful location in the middle of all these continents around us, we cannot feed ourselves. I mean, we are poor. There’s a number of reasons, some of them self-inflicted and some were inflicted on us by others. We had slavery, we had colonialism and we had the Cold War, each of these inflicted a lot of damage on us. Some of this damage, unfortunately still plays a role at the moment. One point, for example, independence when it was 54 countries, how these countries were created haphazardly. The French took the West Africa, the Germans went to Namibia and the Italians went to Serbia. Then the British took all the rest and then it is all the jostling between these powers and drunken colonel sitting at night in Fashoda or somewhere drawing lines between countries without taking into consideration any geographic or natural borders or even people. This cut across communities, these lines. So, we ended up with really fictitious borders which don’t serve anything, we ended up with 44 countries. The empire of Mending, a few 100 years ago was really one of the early empires in Africa with constitution, rights of citizens etc. It included some seven countries, today’s countries. What happened? Why this became seven countries? We have countries within countries. There’s something very unique in Africa, we have countries inside other countries, countries which are landlocked countries which are tiny, frankly, make it completely unviable. This is a major problem and the immediate period after colonisation when they had the organisation of African Union at the time, they decided that it is not helpful but if they try to change it now, this means we’re having endless conflicts and they took the right decision of OK, we just have to respect these portals to avoid conflicts. But that has serious economic and social outcomes as far as we consider. I always ask our African friends if China was 54 countries, each with their own financial systems, currency, flags, whatever, would that be the super power we have today? Size matters. We have been decimated into too many bits and pieces around there and each has its own system, its own customs, barriers, whatever there’s no freedom of movement of goods or people, that is very sad. Of course, now they try to repair some of the damage by creating some form of common market, the Continental Trade Agreement, which is taking time and is very slow, it has to move much faster, but size matters. So, this is the legacy a legacy of colonialism which is still affecting us today. Another legacy also affecting us is that a colonial power will decide what is the economic outlook of that particular colony. So, Britain said, well, I have some textile industries in Manchester and in Bradford, so Egypt and Sudan you do cotton, you just do cotton because I need that here. Then somebody does cocoa, cocoa beans because we need coffee here. So, economies and agriculture were defined by the needs of others, not by the needs of people. I mean at the moment we cannot feed our people, the agricultural sector needs to be completely redesigned in Africa because it doesn’t meet our needs.Â
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We have a lot of legacies from the past, the Cold War is very, very bad for us because the powers that be, we have two competing camps, those guys who are not interested in good governance they’re interested in having clients. I need clients to vote for me in the United Nations, to allow me to have a military presence in the country. So, you are a military dictator you are a thief, a criminal, but that’s not an issue in Buckingham Palace or whatever, because you are our client. Will ask the World Bank to give you money because although we know you’re going to steal the money it's fine. So, we have legacies from the past unfortunately, and decolonization happened very quickly, and democracy is about institutions. None of these institutions really managed to put roots in the African soil before colonisation, because you are not interested in free speech or democracy in a colony if you are a coloniser, so you don’t do anything about that. Then independence came, let us create some fictional stuff here, have a nice colourful flag and get a friendly Prime Minister and so we have all the appearance of an independent state, but not the institutions that underpin the states, so we have so many dictatorships.Â
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Banik             On the role of colonialism, I see a shift that is happening. There are more and more people questioning the role of the British. For example, with the recent passing of the Queen, there has been an outpouring of not just support but also anger for what the British Government did to say Kenya. Or many parts of the world. So, I see there’s more of a push back, don’t you think? Against the British, even the French. Now, what’s happening in Burkina Faso, I mean, you see that people are really questioning that more and more, but there are also others, more, who are saying we have new forms of colonial powers from China etc. So, you have this accusation that there’s a scramble, a new scramble for Africa.
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Ibrahim          Yes. Well, as we go, I mean, I went through the colonial era and the Cold War era on independence and I’m just trying to explain why we lost so many years in Africa, because we came out from the colonial era divided with unrealistic borders and subscale countries. Hit by the Cold War, that was a big blow for governance and leadership because these issues were not on the table. It’s just in two decades between the 50 and 70s we had like 80-88 military coups it is just incredible. After the fall of thewar, first time people started to talk about governance and the first time the word corruption, the C word as they call it was uttered by somebody in the World Bank, by Wolfensohn.Â
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Banik             James Wolfensohn, indeed.Â
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Ibrahim         Yes and he said people were saying no, no, no you cannot, you cannot mention this C word, that was in the 90s. Anyway, so things change should change and the greatest improvement in African government is starting to take place at that time. I’m just trying to explain why we did not manage really to move forward after decolorization. We lost, we lost half a century with no development, many of our rulers were with just crooks, criminals, dictators, etc. And that created another problem, not all of the rulers of course, there was some decent people, there are few decent people. But the problem if you have some very bad people, those guys dominating the news, you know, everybody knows about Idi Amin everybody knows about Maputo everywhere in the world, that frightened investors Africa acquired a reputation as a corrupt place. Decent businesspeople don’t go there. All the dodgy characters come to Africa and we end up with this mess we have, all these contracts for mining for whatever, terrible absolutely terrible and all these things are related, we ended up in a very bad place. And now here we are, I think what really hinders our development at the moment, I’m talking about the other factors, before I talk about self-inflicted because we all inflict these things ourselves. We had a global order which was designed by few Western countries some years ago to suit them, that order really does not represent the rest of the people. It is so, so, so tilted towards the very few and it doesn’t give us any voice. Nobody listened to us, people love to tell us they have all the wisdom, and they sit there and dish out all this, you know?
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Banik             Preaching Â
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Ibrahim          And preaching etc. This doesn’t work. They create the rules, and you don’t even respect the rules they all created. I was looking at some numbers, I mean you take illicit financial flows out of Africa, this is like 90-100 billion dollars a year. This is UN numbers. The total aid average into Africa is 52 billion. Who’s funding whom? I mean it’s just unacceptable. We asked our friends in the West, we said, you guys, you talk about transparency and why did you put down some rules here about this profit shifting and miss pricing etc. Can you control your businesspeople? Or because you are a beneficiary of this opaque system, you are just happy to sit back and smile. I mean, that’s unacceptable. We took on beneficial ownership, anonymous companies, why do you need to have anonymous companies or where do our corrupt people put their money, where do drug dealers put their money, where are all the bad bills? They put it in secretive companies, and we will ask please, please do public registers for this, that’s right people dragging their feet. I was laughing my head off just a few months ago when everybody in Europe was scrambling around who owns this mansion, who owns this superyacht? Is it one of his but you cannot find it because it is owned by a company which is owned by a company which and you don’t know. Excuse me guys. We have been saying that for years and years. Why do you allow this? These are the hubris, unfortunately, of this world system. Talk about the bond market and if you are a rich country you borrow money at 1 or 2%. The poor if they can borrow, they borrow at 10%. I just couldn’t understand this I mean, why? Why do the poor have to pay more for the loans they have, while the rich pay so little? And the people tell me all it is the rating agency. But the rating agency actually has this prejudice, they classify people as sub grid, basements upgrade, and they end up fulfilling their own prophecies. They drive people to be un-investable because if you borrow at 10-11%, there’s a good chance you’re going to default because there’s just too much. You can borrow money from the mafia, maybe at a better rate, I don’t know. I was looking at some numbers by Jeffrey Sachs, who did the other day about how Ghana has a much lower debt to GDP, much, much lower than Greece or Portugal. Those guys were borrowing at 1% or at .35%. Ghana is at 9%.
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Banik             We were talking about Jeff Sachs. He was on my show, you know, a few months ago. It was a very popular episode, by the way, and he made several points, but two of the points stick out now. And I come to think of it, one was of course, as you were saying that African representation in global bodies, the agency of Africa is often not highlighted and so I think Jeff has been saying that Africa should definitely get a seat at the table in many of the forums. That’s one thing. The second thing he was saying was that the problem in the world is a lack of goodwill. I don’t know what you think about that, because hearing you speak about this really nice historical overview. About what has not worked, both in terms of colonial legacy but also leadership, it is clearer to me as to why you started your foundation and why you have the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. So, what do you think has been the impact of some of these measurements? You’ve created, of course, the prize that rewards leaders, but not every year you found a worthy winner, which is also actually quite noteworthy. But since you started the foundation, since you started measuring governance, how do you see this having evolved, you see some progress? I saw the latest, I think it was 2020 you had the last report and there were some indicators that governance was progressing slowly, so can you give us a little overview of what you see, I mean since you started the work with the foundation.Â
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Ibrahim          To start with, I don’t think countries change quickly. It’s a slow process really it is like a big line to turn around, you know, and you see it takes time. And so, we don’t have any illusion there’s going to be a silver bullet. We launch this foundation and then everybody will be one it’s not like that, it’s going to take long time.But we what we need is to keep pushing, you keep pushing slow so progress here we will have more people to the cause. The young generation coming out of Africa is really wonderful it’s different from the old generation. They’re more aware of all these issues and that’s important. We see that the African governance changed a lot for the better in the first decade of this century, precisely because of collapse of the end of the Cold War. Many African countries changed the Constitution to put term limits, insist on multi-party systems and so civil society started to blossom in Africa and that was really wonderful. Unfortunately, in the recent years for a number of reasons that progress has stalled, unfortunately. And I think part of it is also due to the political changes around us. Suddenly we saw around us the rise of big men, authoritarian guys everywhere, I don’t want to go through all the names but everywhere we see all these people coming up and our African leaders look around and say, hey, I like that, you know? We like the Chinese leader to be like the Trump in US, to be like Erdogan in Turkey, to be like Modi in India, to be like, you know all those guys, you know, Putin, there are lots of strong men coming up, it became fashionable. So, the fashion caught up and we saw a lot of reversals of constitutional limits, a number of them had been in Africa, unfortunately we saw more pressure on civil society and somebody came up with the idea, we banned civil society from receiving money from abroad then they become agents. I don’t know who is the smart guy who came up with this idea, because that would classify them as foreign agents. How do you say, excuse me, you go around begging for money from the same guys and are you an agent yourself or what? Why, when several get a little bit of money from this foundation, that foundation, it is really unfortunate. That was one of the reasons I think for the rise of a few strong men around Africa and the rollback of the democratic norms in a number of our countries, and we now see also the phenomena of military coups coming back.Â
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Banik             Just look at Burkina Faso, two coups in eight months.
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Ibrahim          Yeah, they started to come. You look at Sudan, you know how many coups we had there so different countries started to go through, and we hope that this wave of military coups stops. I found it also very sad that we fund these armies who create them and give them arms and give them whatever, and they have all these nice clothes with medals and stuff like that and they hold these sticks. I don’t know why everyone has taken this line instead of going and fighting the terrorists, you know. Come to the capital and beat young people up, I mean what is this? What is this guys? We know from our very little resources who are giving you all this stuff to go and defend us, not to come and beat our kids. You know, this is one of the really nasty things. Talk about shooting ourselves in the foot here, here we shooting ourselves in the foot.
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Banik              But there have been some exceptional leaders who you have awarded your prize, I’m thinking about President Chissano in Mozambique. I’m thinking about Nelson Mandela, who got an honorary award. I’m thinking about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. I’m thinking about President Pires from Cape Verd and so on. So, you have a lot of these leaders and of course I think in eight years or nine years you haven’t found a worthy leader. I wanted to ask you, I was looking at the website in terms of getting the Ibrahim Prize, you have to be a former executive, head of state or Government, you have to have left office in the last three years, democratically elected and served a constitutionally mandated term, and demonstrated exceptional leadership. What do you think defines a good leader? What is leadership for you?Â
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Ibrahim          I think leadership is to serve, really you have this mentality, you are coming to serve.
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Banik              A servant leadership.
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Ibrahim          Yes. You know you’re coming to serve, to deliver to the people. What do people need? And that should be the core of your mission as a leader, I come here, who is hungry, who needs what, how can I create jobs? What about young kids how are we going to train them? We have so many issues I don’t know how we could either sleep at night when you have all these issues, this mentality that you are servant of the people, we’re coming to improve the quality of life for everybody around you. I think that is the main grain which we hoped really to have earlier, it’s this modesty, this humility. I am a servant. Unfortunately, some think, I own you, it’s really unfortunate and we need to get away also from this curse of natural resources. I mean it is so sad.Â
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Banik             Do you believe in the natural the resource curse theory, that having resources can actually be a curse like oil?
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Ibrahim         Of course, if you had bad leaders, you don’t have governance, it will be a curse because it will deepen. You look at Nigeria, OK, before they discovered oil Nigerians had very good agricultural sector, they’re feeding themselves and getting on with life. Then they discover oil. Then I sit back and have rent, the government is just living on rent and now Nigeria cannot feed itself, it’s a huge exporter of food and then this rent money, they probably only have rent money. As a leader and our other elites, you don’t feel that you owe your people anything, your salary doesn’t come from taxes you think that actually you cut this deal with oil company and you want to give some to the people, you’re going to keep some, you give some to your friends, is the rent money. It weakens the link between the ruler and the people because he doesn’t feel obliged, you know here in Europe for example when you have a problem with the Prime Minister or somebody and you say, hey, your wife took a private plane or so and so, it is this is the taxpayers money. You cannot say that of this country, not say tax, but you know it is a shell so it weakens that link and obligation. It is sad when people misuse the resources and it’s actually corruption is so becomes so embedded in the regime how you clean up Nigeria now when you have so many dirty fingers into that oil, I don’t know if you saw the recent numbers, I mean with this boom and the prices of oil and all the oil producing companies are laughing all the way to the bank making a lot of money now except Nigeria. They’re losing money and say, excuse me, how could you that’s Nigeria’s. I mean, this is sad. This is really sad. How much oil is stolen, people and ships are loaded with stolen oil, you cannot keep doing that. And then they subsidise it and most of it then goes across the border stolen and sold for profit. Their country is haemorrhaging resources. These are self-inflicted wounds I talked about. We cannot just complain about colonialism; yes those guys made a lot of mess but we also creating a lot of mess and we have to deal with that.
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Banik              Some people of course, say, you know, the problem with Nigeria is, well, natural resources is there is perhaps a curse, but the real problem is the lack of economic diversification.Â
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Ibrahim         Sure, because you can take some money from oil why do you need to worry. Just don’t do anything. I mean, you destroyed the agricultural sector which you had before, you just neglected it. It’s much easier the oil company you check every year is fine. To your earlier point actually it is true that some years we don’t give a prize, but I think we should not compromise. On the criteria we have set and it’s not very difficult criterion, but it’s not easy either. I’ve always asked this question in Europe whenever I have journalists or conferences or whatever or so, we don’t have any good leaders and I say, listen guys, if I offer this prize to European leader forget about Africans, whom are the European leaders over last 10 years, give me 10 names I give the prize to. They stop and then they start laughing. Because leadership is tough and difficult. And you look around you, who deserves this? And it’s not many.
Banik              In much of the research on leadership, there’s a lot of talk about, you know, most leaders often end up, not just in Africa, but in many parts of the world, they’re very transactional, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, etc. And then there are the so-called visionary leaders thinking about, you know, the long term, but they can also be transactional, maybe even undemocratic. But when you look around if you think about not just the African continent but at large the whole world, are there any leaders that strike you as somebody who could have got the prize even though they were not from Africa or even within Africa? Who impresses you at the moment?Â
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Ibrahim         It’s a difficult question. It’s really a difficult question. I think, well, he’s not president now, but he may become president. I think Lula was very interesting in Brazil because I managed to have a number of conversations with him a long time ago. His idea about social inclusion, ensuring the kids go to school, cash transfers to their families I think there was some very interesting ideas that came up and really tried to do which was unconventional but since then become like almost conventional now.
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Banik              Especially cash transfers in Brazil.
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Ibrahim         I mean he invented it, it was helpful in New York, even with Stiglitz was there and other people, he said, I didn’t listen to those guys at all and they say good you didn’t listen to us. I think at least some people, some leaders I respect for trying to help find a way because I’ve been to Brazil, I’ve seen several favellas, and next door was this opulence, it is amazing, extreme poverty next to extreme wealth.Â
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Banik              That’s inequality for you.
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Ibrahim          It’s too much
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Banik              Lula’s legacy was of course dented because of allegations of corruption. And now, of course, there’s a new election it’ll be exciting to see what happens. Mo, I want to move on to an issue I know you are really interested in because I’ve been reading some of your statements, but also a recent report, I think from July of this year that your foundation published and this really relates to COP 27, that’s going to happen in Egypt in November. And before we talk about COP 27, I wanted to ask you a very sort of general question, more because I’ve just returned from a month in Kenya and Ethiopia. And much of the discussion is really about energy security often there is this feeling even among leaders, that there’s a trade-off between climate and development. Sometimes leaders choose policies that promote development at the expense of climate. It could be a coal-fired power plant for example, because there’s a need for electricity, you want it now, it’s cheap. This technology energy hydropower you have to wait a long time, nobody is giving you money, so you end up choosing this. But in the end, and this has been something I’ve been studying in Lamu, you know, in Kenya where locals said hey, we don’t want this kind of dirty fuel, we want something else renewable. So, the question is do you think there are trade-offs between climate and development? Is it possible?
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Ibrahim         You really frame this very well. You frame it very well and very accurately. We need to find the balance between the two. That’s important.Africa puts out about 3.3% of this stuff out there, OK.
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Banik              The carbon footprint is minimal.
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Ibrahim         Yes, we’re not really producers and today the average footprint of African citizen is 150th. It’s 2% of the footprint of a guy in the developed north.So, we need to think about the proportionality, I mean what we’re talking about what we do does not even move the needle. And instead of talking about mass emissions people putting out people go and tinker with what Africans are doing. Second point is people don’t take into account also that we have one of the major sinkers of carbon in the world, the second largest sink is the…
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Banik              Congo. Â
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Ibrahim         Yes, estimated about 4%. So actually, Africa as a whole is sinking carbon and not even emitting carbon. So, these numbers are important to put things in perspective, so we are not contributing at all to what is going on. Now we have 600 million people without electricity. What will we do about that, you don’t have electricity, you don’t have jobs, you don’t have work, you don’t have education, you don’t have a life. What would avoid that? We say no, we cannot do anything. Of course, we’ll do as much solar as we can do, but we do need some gas also as a transition to help that. Why is that controversial when Europe, the European Union said gas is a legitimate transition fuel. Why is gas fine for Europe, fine for America, fine for everybody, and is not fine for Africans when we are not the polluters, who are the sinkers. And the polluters telling us this is the utmost of hypocrisy.
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Banik              I’ve heard you say this many times in the recent past. You’ve said that there is no development without power, so I can absolutely relate to that. Let me offer you some of the arguments I’ve heard from European leaders, including my own Minister for Development, International Development. Well, I’ve posed this question, why is it that there is a blanket ban on fossil fuel financing, why is it that natural gas as a transition fuel is not seen, and so the argument I often hear is that in our parts of the world and mind you, this is before the Ukraine war. Our taxpayers, my voters, don’t want us to finance fossil fuel projects. And therefore, if it’s our aid money, we get to decide. So, this is one argument. And of course, I’ve heard others say, but why are you telling the World Bank not to finance that is not right. What you do with your own money is fine, but don’t tell financial institutions not to finance. But usually that is the argument. Once the war came, of course, and you’re right, there’s been a western hypocrisy when you have Germany, the leader of Germany, going to Senegal signing an agreement on gas, I mean, it just doesn’t make sense.
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Ibrahim        At the moment half the African gas goes to Europe, goes to Ukraine. So gas is fine for us but for you, no, it’s not fine. When they close before Ukraine when Germany closed down and decided not to continue with nuclear and close down some reactors they built three measure coal-fired power stations. Did anybody say anything? Those wonderful bankers and the multilateral system say or because we don’t need the finance them, they go and do it. Everybody, everybody building this stuff under here, who funded Nord Stream, who’s funding that come on. The British Prime Minister here in UK this morning was talking about now we’re ging to invest a new gas field in Britain we’re going to allow fracking in Britain. So, for them, yeah, we’ll do it, we don’t need the World Bank to finance them. But then they go to the world bank and vote to stop the bank financing us to do parts, small parts of what you do given that we are emitting a fraction of this, and if we’re going to have really any discussion about fossil and carbon, the facts are facts, North America, they put up sixteen tonnes per year per person, Europe puts up six, China puts up six or seven, India puts up two. Let us agree. You know your colleague from India, Professor Rajanmade a very good proposal the other day he published in the op-ed in the Financial Times. I don’t think nobody listened to it, he said, the very simple way to do it why don’t we agree this is a public good? What is the number per person? Three tons, what is the number which will not upset the climate, is it three tons? The guys who do more, they pay it off and here is the price per ton. And this money go to the guys who are doing less. So, we have incentive for the guys doing more not to do and for guys who are doing less to keep doing less because they’re saving money, that is a sensible way.Â
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Banik              Another counter argument I’ve heard, especially on the gas issue is look at oil, it did not help many of these countries escape poverty. Why do you think natural gas is going to solve the electricity problem? How will you know that the revenues will actually trickle down, etc? What do you think of that argument?Â
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Ibrahim        It assumed that Africa is consigned to corruption and misrule. If that’s the situation, we better all go home. Yeah, let’s just switch off the lights, you know? It’s no point.
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Banik              In terms of renewables, again, going back to this report that your foundation published earlier this year, I think Kenya and Ethiopia, there’s a lot of focus on the geothermal. But then there is also, you know, solar investments I think are considerable. It’s not like African leaders have not invested, but one of the things I noticed in the report is that although Africa accounts for 40% of the world’s total solar potential. It only hosts 1% of the world’s panel.
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Ibrahim        Absolutely. Green economy is a great opportunity for us. And we need to look at green as wonderful to embrace. It’s not that when we talk about gas, this is supplementary something but for example, 22 African countries, 22 out of 54 have renewable as their main source of energy, no other content in the world has that. So, we are not polluters and we’re not sitting back we’re trying our best hydro, solar, geothermal, whatever it is, we try to do our best but we are going to need gas also because battery technology is developing.
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Banik              Storage is going to be a big issue, I think.
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Ibrahim        Yeah, that’s why we’re going to need something to sustain us until we can manage this situation.
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Banik              So it’s naive to think that Africa can develop without hydrocarbons.
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Ibrahim        No way, no way. You cannot. It was not sustainable. We do our best and the final arguments who are elite thinkers, what these guys want from us? What more? We are drinking their carbon. What more do you want?
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Banik              So now that we are heading towards COP 27 what do you think will happen? A lot of people are saying this is Africa’s COP, now it’s time for African leaders, negotiators to really influence the process. There’s been a lot of criticism that African leaders, they often write op-eds, but these are not heard enough at COP. Are you optimistic about COP in Egypt?
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Ibrahim         I have to be optimistic Dan, you know.Â
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Banik              What do you think will happen, Mo?Â
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Ibrahim          There have been a lot of discussions about all these issues over this year and I think people start to understand a little bit the African point of view. The problem is we don’t have a voice, we don’t have a seat at the table. You know, these G7, G20 or all these numbers where is the African Union? We’re not there, they do not listen to us. We start to make enough noise and hope you continue to do it. I really hope. I mean, one important issue here we have the ten most vulnerable countries for climate change are all African and we have a low level of resilience and this is creating a major problem for us, damaging infrastructure and damaging the community, it creates conflicts. We have herders moving because of this desertification, encroaching on farm lands, then we end up with conflicts between farmers and herders everywhere from Darfur in Sudan to Carnot and you know, in Nigeria, everywhere in Africa it is happening. And it’s creating serious problems for us. It’s estimated that between now and 2030, we’re going to be an additional 40 million people who have to migrate because of climate, where are they going to go? OK, of course most of them stay in Africa, I mean Europe makes a lot of noise about poor people but that’s this thinking most people are displaced within Africa, actually.And that again create other problems or other conflicts. And of course, there will be more people trying to cross the Mediterranean or whatever and the rich country said, OK, we’re going to create a fund $100 billion a year to help mitigation and adaptation or whatever. Then the money didn’t materialise and you see, this goes back to the issue of carbon pricing. As long as those guys say, oh, I’m going to create a fund to help those poor guys, in their mind it’s a charity, this is not a charity. But if we price carbon, then people know they are paying for their emission for their consumption this is not a charity and that’s why we need to move the carbon. You have been taught in the West, I guess I have been told also in the West and those guys preach to me about the power of the market. We have to expect that the market, when it comes to carbon, where is the market, where is the market? This is the problem the lack of consistency, people need to be consistent it’s not pick and choose.
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Banik              Going to COP then Mo, I’m thinking that two issues that are going to be controversial. One is natural gas, all these countries on the continent, on the African continent that have the potential and it’s good for cooking, it is less polluting, but also as a transition field. So that is one issue and the second, as you just mentioned, the loss and damage aspect, right, the reparations. I’ll try and air this episode close to COP. So, let’s see if your predictions are true.
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Ibrahim       Right. But you see the, the first issue actually I think is going away now our friends in Europe, love gas, love gas. And they’re already running around trying to invest, find a way to secure gas, etc. I think it’s gone away mostly, most likelyÂ
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Banik              So the Ukraine War is going to create more support for natural gas on the African continent?
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Ibrahim       I think so. I think people understand that of course they’re going to say oh because the rationale was for the Italian regime or we’re going to need gas, I understand that and that is a good transition. So it’s much better than burning coal or burning more producing things, but at the same time we going very fast building renewals. I mean, the largest solar farm in the world is in Morocco. We’re doing all sorts of things, hydrogen, Namibia building facility for 307,000 tons a year of green hydrogen. We’re doing our best, so it’s fine. It's an issue of creating that that fund and unless people accept the role of the market here, I don’t see you moving anywhere. If we are serious about climate, we have to price carbon, that’s only the way people behave. But why are our leaders in the West refusing to do that, I just don’t understand.
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Banik              Do you think there’s more willingness to finance loss and damage to provide more money?Â
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Ibrahim          I’m not sure, people refuse to acknowledge the responsibilities or act on them. You see, my point that even if you forget about those and I’m not saying to forget about it but let’s start from your friend Raghuram Rajan,his proposal. I don’t know if you are friends or not. But because you both work at the same field, that’s a wonderful proposal, pay for what you’re doing now that would change that, that works, that’s what will change really the whole situation around us you won’t use it, pay for it. But as long as we say, oh, I will not be elected as a leader if I increase the price of petrol, I want to be elected. They only think short term, so they try to ring in from this kind of commitment. Then we’re going nowhere.
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Banik              Mo, one final question. I read somewhere that you have signed up, you’ve joined the giving pledge, the campaign to encourage wealthy people like yourself, because you’ve been a successful entrepreneur, which you are also contributing to philanthropic causes. Now you know that some philanthropists like the Gates Foundation, like Bill Gates, they’ve been controversial, not least in the United States during the pandemic etc. People wonder what is their real agenda? How do you see philanthropy contributing to global development in the years to come?
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Ibrahim       I don't consider myself philanthropist, to be honest. Vast majority of my money actually if not half I gave towards the foundation, but I think we are a part of civil society in our foundation, fighting for justice, for better governance, etc. We’re not giving away blankets or giving away baby powder. We’re not even a granted foundation because also we don’t accept grants because taking money creates perceptions also.Â
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Banik              And dependency I suppose.Â
Ibrahim       Yeah, we need to be credible, so we don’t take money from any government or anybody or any stuff. This money I made in Africa, and everyone know I made it clearly, let’s give it to the foundation, nobody can say you are agents over anybody. I attended some of the meeting of our friends in the global feature set, in general they are well-meaning people, well-meaning people trying to help and many of them are genuinely helping. Some of course want the limelight, it looks nice and of course, some people like that. But I think anybody wanting to do anything, anybody wanting to say here I gave a dollar for somebody. Who needs it is wonderful because we are as a human race, we need to really support each other. So, I always say thank you I’m not sure that always what you’re doing is the best that can be done or the best way to spend money. But we say thank you that’s all for Bill Gates. I always say thank you Bill you know you come from far away to dish out some businesses in Africa is wonderful, thank you very much. So that would be I think we need to just say thank you.Â
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Banik              Well, it is my turn to thank you for this wonderful chat. It was such a pleasure to see you again. Thank you for coming on my programme.
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Ibrahim          Thank you very much, Dan and we look forward to meeting in person and I promise we’ll come to Oslo and we will have a good conversation with the people there.
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