Earlier this March, immediate former Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba was awarded the Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership. Since its inception in 2003, the prize, worth $5 million, has been awarded only thrice before — to Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Festus Mogae of Botswana and Pedro Pires of Cape Verde.

Other than the problem of bribing African heads of state to perform jobs they are well, sometimes exorbitantly, remunerated for, the prize perpetuates and begins to institutionalise Africa’s inferiority complex, because its definition of exemplary leadership is, like our assessment of our other efforts, pegged to low expectations of ourselves.

Did the four recipients transform lives of millions in significant ways? Did they lay strong foundations in their countries for a gigantic leap forward into the developed group of nations? Importantly, did they reinvent the way Africans think of themselves?

Mozambique recorded high growth, but its poor remain some of the poorest in the world, and despite high agriculture and fishing potential, vast numbers of its population remain food insecure. Botswana has never leapt from its average, albeit consistent, performance, and its rural population remains dirt poor. Cape Verde remains one of the poorest countries in the world and its hold on democracy is tenuous.

In Namibia, the unemployment rate has hovered around 50 per cent since Independence in 1990, and the country has one of the highest wealth inequalities in the world. A majority of its people continue to eke out precarious livelihoods in economically deprived and crime-ridden townships.

The GDP of the four countries remains shamefully small — the size of medium-sized or small corporations in Western countries.

The recipients’ continental and world diplomacy remained as defined by African nationalists who took power in the 1960s.

The nationalists saw protection of sovereignty as the be-all and end-all of African ambition. And since this sovereignty, according to the nationalists, was vested in the heads of state, the objective of African diplomacy became the protection of African presidents from real, potential or imaginary threats.

It did not matter that the president, as in so many instances, was killing his own people or stealing from them, the objective of diplomacy on the continent or abroad remained geared towards the defence and protection of the criminal.

Former OAU secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim, who now incredibly sits on the selection panel, was the most eloquent proponent and exponent of this absurdity.

The recipients did nothing to challenge this basis of African diplomacy. At African Union meetings, they spoke the same language, actively participating in the election of tyrants such as Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea as chairmen of the continental body or giving moral and material support to megalomaniacs such as Robert Mugabe.

Now in the rest of the world, exemplary leadership is measurable in objective terms. During China’s turnaround under Deng Xiaoping and his successors, China moved a mind-blowing 400 million people out of poverty. When Lula da Silva took over Brazil, it was only a promising economy.

By the time he left office after only 10 years, Brazil was a global economic and diplomatic power. And when Lee Kuan Yew, who died last week, took over in Singapore in 1959, the country was a poor ex-colony, but by the time he left office, the country had claimed its place among developed countries.

In Africa, Paul Kagame shows promise, and if he continues on his present trajectory, Rwanda will in the next few years achieve as spectacular a result as the countries above.

What these exemplary leaders did and are doing is to set for themselves and their countries very high standards, re-engineering their people’s psychological view of themselves. Therefore, the Kibaki regime’s achievement of a 5 per cent growth rate was really a failure measured against Kenya’s needs and potential.

To measure itself against Daniel arap Moi’s negative growth is a rating basis that belongs to those with low expectations of themselves. And this example really captures the heart of the problem with the Mo Ibrahim Prize — it rewards presidents for not failing. It is akin to rewarding your child for not coming last in class.

Tee Ngugi is a political and social commentator based in Nairobi.