Billionaire Mo Ibrahim lambasts African youths for electing the elderly as their leaders

SUDANESE-British billionaire businessman Mohammed Ibrahim has lambasted African youths for supporting old men to become their presidents in an age where the rest of the world is moving towards young leaders.

At a recent event, which had former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in attendance, Mr Ibrahim said countries doing way better than African nations back younger candidates for the presidency. Popularly known as Mo Ibrahim, the philanthropist, who runs a charity that supports good governance on the continent, said that elsewhere, leaders in their 40s are being elected, whereas in Africa, they are in their 90s.

He added: “You see people at 90 years and about to start new terms and we see people in wheelchairs unable to raise hands standing for election. This is a joke and you are free to laugh because the whole world already laughing at us.

“In the US, the most important country in the world, Obama who is half African anyway was 46 to 47 years when elected president but if ​Obama was in Kenya,  he would ​be driving bus​ maybe.​ He was not youngest president as Bill Clinton and JF Kennedy were even younger, so why do these big countries entrust their nuclear weapons, economies, resources, etc to men in their 40s and we only pick up men at 90s to lead us; to lead us where? To the grave?"

Mr Ibrahim worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel. After selling Celtel in 2005 for $3.4bn, he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to encourage better governance in Africa, as well as creating the Mo Ibrahim Index, to evaluate nations’ performance.