When, for the second time in a row, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that there was no winner for its cash-rich Africa good governance prize, the mischievous part of me was briefly delighted.

It seemed like a deserving indictment of some of Africa’s thieving and incompetent leaders.

When the Sudan-born telecoms billionaire Mohammed Ibrahim established the $5m annual prize, there was always a possibility that it would run out of candidates.

The prize seeks to encourage African leaders to govern in an enlightened fashion, and is given only to former democratically-elected leaders who have left office honourably.

Even at the best of times, and with all the will in the world, there will be some years where no African leaders retire simply because their time will not yet be up.

Now, while that is understandable, the impression that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is creating whenever it doesn’t award the prize undermines the very sensible reason why it was set up.

Most people don’t read the fine print.

When they hear there was no winner for the second time in a row, it only helps play up the prejudices about Africa; that all the leaders in Africa are hopeless and that this is still a dark continent where there is no light.

That is wrong. While quite a few are bad apples, the progress in many African countries is remarkable.

Even in Nigeria, which once seemed doomed to be burdened with dysfunctional governments and whose political class is among the most corrupt in Africa, they fought attempts by Olusegun Obasanjo to amend the constitution and lift term limits, so he could stand for a third term in 2007.

When his successor Umaru Yar’Adua died in May, the transition to his vice president Goodluck Jonathan was one of the smoothest ever in Africa, instead of being the bloodbath some feared.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation says it has “very high” standards, but you can’t have standards in a vacuum.

If you have a prize for the top student in a class, in one year the best student can be the one who gets four A+s.

If the next year the best student gets a C+, he or she still gets the prize.

Today the Mo Ibrahim prize risks degenerating into a third rate tropical circus.

If you read many blogs on the issue, there is a growing suspicion that the Mo Ibrahim Foundation was too ambitious to put up the richest prize in the world; that it can no longer afford it and is hiding behind the excuse that there are no worthy candidates.

Nominations

Things are not helped by the fact that the communication around the Mo Ibrahim is, to be honest, lousy.

There is no buzz, no leaks, no information on nominations, so it does not benefit from the public conversations that the Oscars, for example, get, thus preparing people for the outcome.

Either the prize is radically redesigned so that it can be awarded consistently, or Mo should just scrap it.

Mo set out to create a positive narrative about Africa.

That narrative is slowly turning out to be about him, not Africa.

When he launched the prize, he was universally praised.

Today, he is in danger of being seen as a joker, a poser who led us all down the garden path.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]