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24 Governance: An Int'l J. Pol'y, Admin, & Institutions 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/gvnanlj24 and id is 1 raw text is: Commentary African Governance: The Importance of More and Better Data NATHALIE DELAPALME* Five years ago, when the Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched, most observers wondered about its specific focus: governance and leader- ship in Africa. For most of them, governance was, at best, a heavy conditionality of donors' aid and, at worst, naturally bad in African countries. Today, as everybody is bent on assessing the Millennium Development Goals, 10 years after they have been set by world leaders convening at the United Nations, and five short years before these targets are due to be met, governance has suddenly become the alpha and omega of all prominent meetings. Whether in New York at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2010 or in ongoing preparations in various capitals for the upcoming G20 Summit, gover- nance has become the buzzword of development circles. This new awareness owes much to two major shifts in this new century. First is the financial crisis that maimed the developed world and underlined, if anything, a severe lack of governance, mostly among those who were always so quick to point fingers and preach. Second is the huge potential of the African continent: an average growth rate now five times higher than its immediate neighbor, the euro zone; a growing population of which two-thirds are under 25; abundant and yet mostly unexploited natural resources and space; and consequently numerous emerging partners and growing competi- tion between all of them. That governance is a crucial factor of any development policy- domestic and donor alike-has become an undisputed fact. Harness- ing Africa's huge potential requires wise and excellent leadership that can entrench good governance at an institutional level. But these two crucial elements-excellent leadership and good governance-are in short supply. That is why they have been chosen as the main focus of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's work. *Mo Ibrahim Foundation Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2011 (pp. 1-3). © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK. ISSN 0952-1895