Broke and without a home or a car, former Cape Verde president Pedro Verona Pires took a taxi to his mother’s apartment after a wave of democratic reforms he started swept him out of power in 1991.

Instead of buying himself a jet like his peers, Botswana’s Festus Mogae used the money to fight the HIV pandemic that was ravaging his country. He was reportedly not perturbed with regularly flying economy class for much of his presidential tenure.

Hailed both at home and abroad as the “peacemaker” for ending his country’s 16-year civil war, Mozambique’s Joachim Chissano chose not to run for a third term in 1999 despite the Constitution allowing him to do so.

The three men are laureates of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for African leadership. If there is a common thread that runs through them, it is their humility.

They showed other African leaders that it is possible not to let power go to their heads.

According to the London-based Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which awards the Prize, these laureates represent the antithesis of the Big Man syndrome seen around the continent.

The foundation says that they are humble individuals and that they have distinguished themselves in the service of their nations.

The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which is bigger than the Nobel Prize in terms of value, was started by Sudan-born billionaire Mo Ibrahim eight years ago.

Mo Ibrahim has argued passionately that Africans need to change how they view themselves. And this prize, he says, is a small first step.

“Africans do not know about the good leaders who are doing great things on this continent,” said Mo Ibrahim.

“They rely on the Western media, which continues to propagate the long-held narrative that African leaders are still the Mobutus and Idi Amins of this world,” he adds. 

“What we are doing with this prize is to bring out the heroes living among us” he explains. “Let us find our heroes and celebrate them.”

The prize also seeks to encourage African presidents to focus on the core business of governing rather than having to worry about their retirement when they leave office.

“It’s good for them to retire in dignity,” Graca Machel, who sits on the foundation’s board, said.

“The prize also allows the former head of state to continue playing a role in the development of his country,” she added.

READ: The Mo Ibrahim Prize helps us celebrate ourselves as Africans -MACHEL

The first Mo Ibrahim Prize, awarded in 2007, went to Joachim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, who ended a 16-year civil war that claimed a million lives and set his country on a path to becoming one of Africa’s most successful and stable democracies.

This year’s award went to Namibia’s Hifikepunye Pohamba, who according to the committee awarding the prize has cemented “Namibia’s reputation as a well-governed, stable and inclusive democracy.”

“During the decade of his presidential mandate, he demonstrated sound and wise leadership,” Salim Ahmed Salim, the chairman of the prize committee, said at a press conference in Nairobi.

“At the same time, he maintained his humility throughout his presidency.”

Since President Pohamba took office 10 years ago, Namibia has seen primary school enrolment reach almost 100 per cent.

For a country with one of the highest prevalence rates in the world, over 80 per cent of people living with HIV are now on ARVs. Infections have fallen by 36 per cent while mother to child transmission is well below four per cent. During his tenure, Namibia achieved higher middle income status but the country still has extreme inequalities in income distribution and standard of living.

In 2008, Botswana’s Festus Mogae won the prize for “maintaining and consolidating Botswana’s stability and prosperity” in the face of an HIV pandemic.

In the following two years the foundation did not find a suitable candidate for the prize because many African leaders were either refusing to retire, leave office after losing in elections or going back on their pledges not to run. 

READ: Ibrahim prize will stay uncollected — for a while

But in 2011, Cape Verde’s Pedro Verona Pires, who won the 2001 presidential elections after losing a decade earlier, won the Prize “for transforming Cape Verde into a model of democracy, stability and increased prosperity.”

During his presidency, GDP grew annually by over 6 per cent, per capita income grew by over 180 per cent, literacy rates is well over 80 per cent and life expectancy is above 70 years.

In 2007, the country made the great leap forward from the list of least developed countries. It is now a higher middle income country with a per capita income of $3,900.

And when his presidential tenure ended in 2011, even as his supporters urged him to stay on, he chose to step down.

The foundation says the prize is given only to a democratically elected president who has stayed “within the limits set by the country’s Constitution, has left office in the past three years and has demonstrated excellence in office.”

Those who win get $5 million spread over 10 years and $200,000 a year for the rest of their lives. But critics have argued that the prize’s standards are too high and that is why for the past eight years the prize has only been awarded four times.

Africa has 54 countries with complex social, political and economic challenges, and the qualities of leadership required to govern a country of 173 million people, like Nigeria, could be vastly different from those required to run a small island nation of two million people like Mauritius.

“It is true that some countries are more difficult to govern than others,” Calestous Juma, professor of the international development at Harvard University in the US, told The EastAfrican. “Governing Burundi, given its history, may pose more challenges than governing Botswana.”

“One way to respond to variations in Africa’s governance challenges is to have more prizes… There are many other African billionaires who should be supporting prizes in a diversity of fields,” he said.

Critics also say the prize gives more money to African presidents who leave office as multi-millionaires rather than giving it to those who need it the most. They argue that this is almost like bribing the presidents to do what they were put in office to do.

“African presidents are wealthy anyway and don’t need the entire sum,” said Makau Mutua, a professor of law at State University of New York.  “Giving them the entire sum could be misinterpreted to mean that the only way you get African leaders to act right is to bribe them with even more money.”

Kenyan businessman Chris Kirubi says leaders in Africa “retire from office with a lot of money.” “Mo Ibrahim should instead channel the money to supporting youth projects in Africa where unemployment is reaching crisis levels,” he added.

But Ms Machel said that the laureates never did what they did for the money. “Most of them were taken by surprise when they learnt that they had won,” she said.

A negative message about the state of governance goes out each year when no winner is announced. But while this year the foundation found a worthy candidate, some are calling for the criteria to be relaxed so that leaders from different sectors including the civil society can be considered for the prize.

“Emerging leaders, governors, mayors and leaders from the private sector and civil society should also be honoured,” Prof Juma said. 

The question whether the prize has inspired African leaders to strive for excellence is open for debate. But Prof Juma said that the fact that there is a benchmark for governance makes leaders think about their contributions irrespective of whether they win the prize or not.