African Mobile Phone tycoon Mo Ibrahim spoke at a two day con­fer­ence pro­mot­ing good cor­rup­tion free gov­ern­ment in the African con­ti­nent. Ibrahim says that gov­ern­ments need to inte­grate or else their states would per­ish. Ibrahim urged con­fer­ence atten­ders ask if their lead­ers are really seri­ous about solv­ing problems.

From Reuters writer Kat­rina Man­son attended the con­fer­ence and gives us some quotes from Ibrahim’s speech.

“Some of our coun­tries, and I’m really sorry to say this, are just not viable,” the Sudanese mobile phone tycoon said.

“We need scale and we need that now — not tomor­row, the next year or the year after.”

Sev­eral over­lap­ping regional group­ings through­out the con­ti­nent are try­ing to knit their economies closer together, but the pace and extent of inte­gra­tion is slower than hoped.

“Intra-African trade is 4–5 per­cent of our inter­na­tional trade. Why? This is unac­cept­able, unvi­able, and peo­ple need to stand up and say this,” Ibrahim said.

“Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny lit­tle coun­tries and be ready to com­pete with China, India, Europe, the Amer­i­cans? It is a fallacy.”

The $5 mil­lion Ibrahim Prize, which has pre­vi­ously been awarded to out­go­ing pres­i­dents Joaquim Chissano of Mozam­bique and Fes­tus Mogae of Botswana, was not awarded this year.

Judges led by for­mer U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said although there were some cred­i­ble can­di­dates, they would not make an award. They did not explain why.

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