$5M African Leadership Prize Goes to ... Nobody

Nobody has won this year's $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the committee responsible for picking a winner announced today. That’s an enormous snub to the people eligible for the award, who include former heads of state Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, and John Kufuor of Ghana. The committee professed to have “full respect” for them but said, without elaborating, that it hadn’t been able to pick a winner, the AP reports.

Only democratically elected leaders who’ve left office recently are eligible, making candidates scarce. “I would imagine that they are thinking about raising the bar and having raised the bar they have found that no one could get over” it, said one professor. He contends that it should have been awarded anyway, but others disagree. “It hasn’t been a great year for democracy in Africa,” said a Human Rights Watch counselor. “Maybe that’s what they were tying to say.” (More Africa stories.)