Award Offers Millions for Good Governance In Africa

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FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

And now we've got more on the award from Robert Rotberg. He's the director of Harvard University's Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution. That's a big title for a program trying to ensure diplomacy and peace.

Professor Rothberg teamed up with Mo Ibrahim to set standards for who will get the award. He joins us by phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Good to have you on the program.

Professor ROBERT ROTBERG (Director, Harvard University's Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution): Delighted to be with you.

CHIDEYA: So you helped devise the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. I understand that you're still in the process of trying to figure out all the details. Tell us about it.

Prof. ROTBERG: About six or seven years ago, in order to help improve African leadership and also to strengthen governance in the world but also in Africa, my students and I at the Kennedy School began thinking about how we could develop an index of good governance.

And so we came up with eight major indicators - security, rule of law, political freedom, economic opportunity, educational services, health services, the arteries of commerce that is the infrastructure, and finally empowerment of civil society and women.

And having devised those indicators, which each has six or seven sub-indicators, we began to construct an index not only for Africa but to test this on the countries of the world. And with the students we developed an index scheme that seems to work. And now Mo Ibrahim and the Ibrahim Foundation have asked us to construct an index more formally for sub-Saharan Africa, and that's what we're about to begin to do.

CHIDEYA: In a lot of countries people are cut off from communication, so it must be very difficult to really measure accurately these things that you're talking about.

Prof. ROTBERG: No, I think it will be possible to measure quite accurately. The reason I say that is we're measuring outcomes. We're not measuring people's perceptions. We're not using what people in the village might think about this or that. What we want to know is if their life expectancy has improved, if the infant mortality has gone down, if more women students, for example, are persisting and going into high school. We also want to know if the country is secure, if crime rates are up or down, if GDP is up or down and so on.

And I only ask you and your listeners to focus on their own city or town where they are living, their own state, because these measures apply to any place in the world.

CHIDEYA: You mentioned GDP - gross domestic product - but in a lot of the nations that you're going to be measuring a lot of people live, at least partly, on sustenance farming or other means like small commerce. I'm just asking, you know, how can you measure accurately some of the things that you're talking about when there's not maybe the same ability to get statistics as you do in the U.S.?

Prof. ROTBERG: Right. That's a very fair question. And we will devise, if we don't have already, measures that will take into account. I used GDP as an example but there are seven or eight other economic measures, one of which might be the inflation rate in the country, which affects farmers. It might be the amount of money in circulation. It might be what currency the people are using. And there are also sorts of fancy statistical measures which we can use.

Another very simple way that listeners can understand what we're doing is to think of measuring - which we will do on a per capita basis and on a square kilometer basis - the number, the mileage of paved roads. And then we will also ask whether those roads are maintained and how well. So we'll develop a pothole index.

CHIDEYA: That's kind of funny.

Prof. ROTBERG: That's right but think of it, and in even in Des Moines, people care whether their streets have holes in them or not.

CHIDEYA: This Mo Ibrahim index is going to be used to give the presidents or the leaders of certain countries the chance to retire gracefully, the chance to move on, or at least a reward for doing so.

Prof. ROTBERG: Right.

CHIDEYA: The fact that the award is given to the leaders and not the people, is that going to directly impact the people's lives?

Prof. ROTBERG: Very good question. The Ibrahim Governance Index, which I'm putting together with the team, will show which countries are best governed and will show - will be diagnostic so it will enable civil society in these countries, or donors or foreign investors, to see in which sectors these particular governments and countries are weak.

Once we have that information, we will supply the information to a selection committee, which Mo Ibrahim is going to appoint. In the selection committee, we'll use our numbers as a necessary but not a sufficient criteria for the prize.

CHIDEYA: In the end, what do you hope to accomplish with this?

Prof. ROTBERG: My vision, which is very similar to Mo Ibrahim's vision, is that the Good Governance Index and the prize will, first of all, bring governance out of the closet the way corruption has been brought out of the closet by Transparency International so that everyone will now focus on the importance of good governance, which has been neglected. And that will mean an improvement in the lives of Africans everywhere on the subcontinent.

Secondly, through the prize, so we'll have a good focus on leadership and leaders will begin to behave more effectively and help their people. The assumption, my assumption here, which is similar to Mo's assumption, is that leadership matters more in these poor countries than it does in wealthy countries, where you have many different kinds of persons capable of leading.

CHIDEYA: Prof. Rotberg, thanks so much.

Prof. ROTBERG: My pleasure.

CHIDEYA: Robert Rotberg of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is helping to work with Mo Ibrahim on the Index of Governance.

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CHIDEYA: Coming up, black comics say racism is no laughing matter when they try to make it big. And is L.A. the black comedy capital? We'll discuss these topics and more on our Roundtable next.

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