None of the African leaders who have left office in the past three years deserve to be considered exceptional role models for leadership on the continent.

That is the verdict from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation after it declined to give out its annual award for the second time in a row and the third time since its inception in 2007.

Set up by Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British billionaire who made his fortune in telecommunications, the prize “recognises and celebrates African leaders who have developed their countries, lifted people out of poverty and paved the way for sustainable and equitable prosperity.”

“Some people say we are giving a negative message [about Africa], but we are not just in the business of positive messages,” Mo Ibrahim said last week. “We would lose our credibility.”

Critics say the Foundation puts the bar too high. Others say it should look at leadership beyond Africans running countries. Look closely at the facts, however, and it is clear the Foundation in reality has only a small pool to choose from.

To begin with, African leaders have a penchant for clinging onto office. Six out of the top 10 longest-serving leaders in the world are Africans.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Jose Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have all been in power for more than three decades. They are followed closely by Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso.

Africans leaders who have been in power for between 10 years and a quarter of a century include Omar Bashir in Sudan, Idriss Deby in Chad, Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Joseph Kabila of DR Congo and Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea.

Throw in King Mwsati III of Swaziland, the continent’s last absolute monarch and you already have 19 out of 53 African countries that are not in contention for the prize.

If you include Somalia (failed state), Guinea Bissau (narco-state), South Sudan (emerging state), Mauritania, Central African Republic, Chad and Burundi (unstable states) then you have about half of the continent out of contention.

West Africa has taken one step forward with some degree of normalcy returning to Sierra Leone, Cote D’Ivoire and Liberia but coups in Mali, Mauritania, Guinea and Niger throw another six countries out of the pot, leaving us with just over 20.

Of those, Nigeria is rising but has to deal with terrorism in the form of Boko Haram, the most violent symptom of decades of a dysfunctional state.

Madagascar is yet to recover from its coup in 2010 while Comoros remains a coup waiting to happen. Togo underwent elections but the election of Faure Gnassingbe did not fool anyone; the country remains in the grip of the Gnassinbge family since 1967.

Similarly, King Mohammed VI of Morocco rolled out some political changes in the midst of the Arab Spring but his appetite for reform appears to have been dulled after the uprising turned into the winter of political discontent.

Benin held elections in 2011 but these were disputed while Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade campaigned himself out of contention for the prize when he mended the Constitution to stand again, only for voters to force him into long-overdue retirement.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had been one of the longest-serving leaders and was never in the contention as was Bakuli Muluzi of Malawi who had been tinkering with the constitution.

Their death in office knocked them off the list anyway. Death also knocked off Ghana’s John Atta Mills who would have made a strong case had he gone on to step down at the end of his term.

That narrows the list down to just about a dozen countries. President Mwai Kibaki might have fancied his chances after stepping down earlier this year but the disputed 2007 election and the violence that followed are likely to keep him off that podium as well.

It is too early to tell how Joyce Banda’s radical reforms in Malawi will end. However, one can safely say of Jacob Zuma that while he will step down at the end of his term or the next if he wins the upcoming election, corruption and nepotism scandals in his government will rule him out of contention in the same way that Thabo Mbeki’s legacy was claimed by the internecine tendencies within the African National Congress.

Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete does not leave until October 2015, and until then he has to balance the delicate political tensions between the mainland and Zanzibar over a new constitution, a clampdown on critical media, and Dar es Salaam’s new aggressive foreign policy in the DRC, which has pitted him against his East African Community colleagues. If he can juggle all those balls successfully over the next two years he would have earned the prize.

That narrows the options to just a handful of candidates. Kailash Purryag of Mauritus, Michael Sata of Zambia and Jose Carlos Fonseca of Cape Verde who took office in the last two years as did James Michel of Seychelles (in power since 2004, serving a third term, but whose election, in 2011, was marred by allegations of voter-bribery.

Ian Khama of Botswana is up for re-election next year and could win so he, too, drops out of contention. That leaves Armando Guebuza of Mozambique (where elections are due next October) and Hifikepunye Pohamba of Namibia (due to step down after elections next year).

This list of countries is both expected and surprising. It is expected because the Mo Ibrahim Index, which measures governance, has consistently shown these countries to be among the best governed. It ranks the top five as Mauritius, Botswana, Cape Verde, Seychelles and South Africa.

The list is, however, also surprising. Many of them are island states. They are also small-population states. With the exception of South Africa, the other countries have populations of about two million or less; Seychelles has less than 90,000 people.

Smaller states are not necessarily easier to govern; Namibia with 2.3 million is better run than Comoros, with a population of 720,000. However, it appears that having undemocratic neighbours is bad for your own democracy and good governance.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation also found that nine out of every 10 Africans live in a country whose governance has improved overall since 2000. This is easy to prove; Africa is more peaceful today than it was a decade or two ago but the absence of war does not always mean the presence of peace or democracy.

And while there are more elections taking place across the continent, many of them are marred by voter bribery and advantages to the incumbency that undermine the will of the people.

The quantity has increased but the quality of democracy and good governance in African remains low.

Until more exceptional leaders emerge, Mr Mo Ibrahim’s prize and money will go uncollected, and Africa will continue to put one step forward followed by one or two steps backwards.