# Transcript

MO IBRAHIM
Good governance is important. It’s important for all of us. Of course, it’s especially more important for us in Africa for various reasons, which I’ll try to go through them. Africa is a wonderful continent. It’s huge; second largest continent on Earth. There’s immense resources, and most of African territories actually have not really been explored for resources. But what we’ve discovered so far is really huge.
And there are not many African people around. We have just 1 billion people. That’s two thirds of India, two thirds of China. You can fit both China and India into Africa, and still, you have a lot of space to fit other people as well. It’s a very rich and huge continent, yet African people are poor, very poor.
And the question is, why are we poor? If we have all this land, wonderful land, seashores we have, why are we poor? And for me, the answer was obvious, was simple. We are poor because of misrule, because we are badly governed. What happened over the last 50 or 60 years, actually, is that we missed a lot of opportunities.
And it is sad to go back and see that at the moment of independence of most African countries – and actually, the African Union celebrated, this year, 50 years of its inception – that countries like Ghana, Egypt, and many other countries have higher income per capita than South Korea, or the two Koreas at the time, or China, or India, or Malaysia, or Singapore.
We had actually higher income per head at that time. Where are we now, and where are those guys? I think the blame should rest squarely, really, on the way we have governed ourselves. And it’s time to bring this issue to the forefront because there is no way, there’s no way, we’re going to move forward. Not any amount of aid is going to move Africa forward.
The only way for us to move forward is really to ensure the good governance, the way we manage our economy, our social life, our legal structures, institutions. That is the basis for development. Anything after that is not sustainable. We cannot rely on people to come and feed our poor. We cannot rely on people to come and treat our sick. This is the responsibility of our governments.
Now, we say it is so important to have governance, and it is a prerequisite for development. But governance in the public sector is not just enough. We cannot have good governance without also having good governance in the private sector. People need to understand that. This is very important.
You take any issue. Start with corruption. Public servants or political leaders don’t corrupt themselves. There’s partners for them in the private sector. And if we have a go at corruption, we really need to deal with corruption in the private sector. There’s no question about that.
The other thing is important for us is the issue of the illicit transfer of funds. Illicit transfer of funds out of Africa at least is double the amount of aid Africa receives every year. So it just speaks for itself.
We need companies, also multinational companies, to pay their taxes. Our problem is that these wonderful, great companies have the best lawyers in the world, have the best accountant in the world, because they can afford to pay whatever to have the best. And small African countries, we have very weak tax collection systems. We don’t have the smart or fantastic lawyers and forensic accountants who can really challenge.
If anybody is any good, they will get a job with the companies anyway. They wouldn’t work for the civil service. And so we have a big problem. And I was so delighted that Britain also discovered it has the same problem.
[LAUGHTER]
Actually, everybody have the same – even the United States have the same problem. So welcome to the club. And it’s interesting. One issue, which we have been screaming about for decades, suddenly came to be in the forefront of the political debate here in this country and many European countries. And we hope, at last, that people in this country, and in the developed countries, are going to move now to stop all this nonsense. It’s not acceptable anymore.
And the challenge we’ll have for the business leaders is the same we’ll have for the political leaders. Where is your leadership? Where is good governance in your institutions? Avoiding tax is not really a wonderful thing. Why didn’t you act in a decent way? That’s a challenge we need to throw at the business community.
And also, I believe that self-regulation is not enough. What we need, also, is some proper regulation at really the international level. And we hope Chinese and Russians will also join in that to enhance the transparency. I’m not against tax havens, or havens, or whatever it is. I realise the need for international trade for people from different countries and different parties to execute contracts in a neutral jurisdiction. Of course, I understand that.
But all we are asking for is transparency. We need to know who are the beneficial owners of all this huge number of companies which are syphoning profits under whatever fantastic rules of accountancy. That’s all what we want. And once you know that, I think the problem is solved. So we’re really seeking transparency, transparency everywhere.
And we need to insist on transparency in the private sector because, believe me, we cannot have good governance in the public sector unless also we have good governance in the private sector. Otherwise, we’ll still end with this massive corruption problem. So these two must really go hand in hand.