Mo Ibrahim

Sir Mohammed Fathi Ahmed Ibrahim (محمد إبراهيم; born 3 May 1946) is a Sudanese-British billionaire businessman.

He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which, when sold, had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

He was born on 3 May 1946 in Sudan, of Nubian descent, the second of five children, four of whom were boys.

His family moved to Alexandria, Egypt when he was young, and father Fathi was employed there by a cotton company, and his mother Aida was very keen that they all get a good education.

Ibrahim has a bachelor's degree from Alexandria University in electrical engineering.

In 1974 he returned to Sudan and started working for the telephone company, Sudan Telecom.

He moved to England and earned a master's degree from the University of Bradford in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, and a PhD from the University of Birmingham in Mobile Communications.

In 1989 he founded MSI, a consultancy and software company, which in 2000 was bought by the Marconi Company.

In 1998, MSI spun off MSI-Cellular Investments, later renamed Celtel, as a mobile phone operator in Africa.

Celtel was largely financed by equity rather than international banks, which were averse to investment in Africa at the time.

In 2004, Ibrahim announced that he planned to take Celtel public through the London Stock Exchange.

After selling Celtel in 2005 for $3.4 billion, he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to encourage better governance in Africa, as well as creating the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, to evaluate nations' performance.

He is also a member of the Africa regional advisory board of London Business School.

Ibrahim and his team decided to sell Celtel in 2005 to Kuwait-based the Mobile Telecommunications Company (now Zain).

At the time of sale, Celtel had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

The company had 4,000 employees, of whom 98% were African.

Mobile telephones have brought wide reaching economic and social benefits in Africa and Ibrahim was credited with "transforming a continent".

Before funding the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in 2006, Ibrahim was employed by British Telecom and later worked as the technical director for Cellnet (now O2), a subsidiary of British Telecom, where he launched the first cellurar network in the UK.

In 2006 Ibrahim founded the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which is headquartered in London and Dakar, to strengthen sound governance and leadership in Africa.

In 2007 he initiated the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which awards $5 million to African heads of state who deliver security, health, education and economic development to their constituents and democratically transfer power to their successors.

Ibrahim has pledged to give at least half of his wealth to charity by joining The Giving Pledge.

In 2007, the Foundation inaugurated the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, to recognise outstanding political leadership on the continent, with the first recipient former president Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique.

Nelson Mandela was named an Honorary Laureate in 2007.

The Prize has been awarded a further five times, most recently in 2021 to former president of Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou.

Every year, the Foundation publishes the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which ranks the governance performance of all 54 African countries.

The Foundation defines governance as "the provision of political, social and economic public goods and services that every citizen has the right to expect from their government, and that a government has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens."

The Foundation hots an annual event, the Ibrahim Governance Weekend (IGW), which brings together prominent players from across Africa and globally, to discuss issues of importance to Africa's progress.

The Foundation offers scholarships at University of Birmingham, SOAS, and London Business School.

These scholarships are on topics of International Development at University of Birmingham, Governance of Development in Africa at SOAS, and an MBA at London Business School.

The scholarships are initiated for African students, both master students and postgraduates.

Ibrahim contributes to the leadership and activities of numerous other organisations, including the B Team, Council on Foreign Relations, Commission on State Fragility, Global Alliance Foundation, ONE, Open Government Partnership, School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, the World Bank ID4D and the World Justice Project.

Ibrahim has received multiple awards in recognition of his business and philanthropic activities, including: the GSM Association Chairman’s Award for Lifetime Achievement (2007), The Economist Innovation Award for Social and Economic Innovation (2007), the BNP Paribas Prize for Philanthropy (2008), the Clinton Global Citizen Award (2010), the Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Leadership and Service (2014), the Foreign Policy Association Medal (2014) and the David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award (2012, 2017).

Mo Ibrahim was also selected for the TIME "Top 100" list in 2008 and was ranked first in the annual Powerlist of influential Black Britons.

In 2008 he was ranked first in the annual Powerlist of the most influential Black Britons.

Ibrahim is the funding chairman of Satya Capital Limited, a private investment firm primarily focused on Africa.

Ibrahim has been featured in the Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World (2008), The New African Most Influential Africans (2014), Bloomberg Markets 50 Most Influential (2015), the Jeune Afrique 100 Most Influential Africans (2019), He is a member of the Hall of Fame for the ‘Powerlist’ of influential black Britons.

Since 2010, Ibrahim has lent his support to the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, a UN initiative which aims to spread the full benefits of broadband services to unconnected peoples.

According to the Forbes 2011 Billionaire List, Mo Ibrahim is worth $1.8 billion, making him the 692nd richest person in the world.

He was made Commander of the Order of the Lion by President Macky Sall of Senegal (2014) and Commander of the Wissam Arch by King Mohammed VI of Morocco (2014).

Ibrahim is the co-founder and co-chair of the Africa-Europe Foundation, which was established in 2020 to strengthen Africa-Europe relations.