Tag Archives: Sirleaf

The Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership

Share Button

Feb. 13, 2018 — Congratulations to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who retired in January 2018 after 12 years as President of Liberia, for winning the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership.  It is for this that the award, which pays $5 million, was originally established.

The Prize is a fascinating experiment.   Some have criticized the fact that in a majority of years nobody has been found worthy.   But I wrote a favorable evaluation in “The Ibrahim Prize for Excellence Among African Leaders,” published in 2014 in the African Policy Journal. read more

Share Button

The Hour of the Technocrats

Share Button

The Hour of the Technocrats has arrived.   In desperation from debt crises that their gridlocked political systems have created, Italy and Greece both in November chose new Prime Ministers who are technocratic economists rather than politicians:   Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos, respectively.  One can even describe them as professors:  Monti has been president of the prestigious Bocconi University when not a European Commissioner in Brussels, and Papademos has been my colleague at Harvard Kennedy School in the year since he finished his term as Deputy Governor of the European Central Bank (even teaching a class I usually teach). read more

Share Button