Mo Ibrahim is the founder and Chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

By Mo Ibrahim
LONDON – The usual images of Africa are of a continent mired in conflict and squalor. But this picture, based on Africa’s most corrupt regimes, is unfair and misleading – like claiming that all Europeans are guilty of “ethnic cleansing” because of what happened in the former Yugoslavia. Yes, African has some failed states, but most of its 53 countries are mostly peaceful, agreeable places.

Last year, the annual Ibrahim Index of African governance, produced by my foundation, showed that governance had improved in two-thirds of African countries. And if we look at politicians such as Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, or Festus Mogae, the former president of Botswana, as well as men like Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela, the high calibre of African leadership is obvious.

This matters because good governance is the cornerstone of development. Governments must establish an enabling environment for the private sector to create jobs, and officials cannot consider the public purse to be a private bank account. Government is responsible for delivering services, but it is up to civil society to be vigilant and ensure that officials work toward these aims. A strong civil society that monitors and demands more of its leaders is vital to improving Africa’s governance. As with economics, demand stimulates supply.

The annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance tracks government performance across sub-Saharan Africa, providing a tool that allows citizens and civil-society groups to monitor their governments’ progress. We look at almost a hundred indicators and define governance in a new way – as the public goods and services that should be provided to citizens. We do not measure inputs – including aid or natural-resource revenues – or government promises and commitments; instead, we have chosen to measure the impact of government activities on the lives of citizens.

Alongside this focus on improving African governance, we must also put pressure on our leaders to encourage regional integration. Many small, landlocked African countries will never become serious players in the global economy without increased cooperation within their own regions. Today’s haphazard, overlapping regional integration is proving largely ineffective, and this severely hampers African countries’ ability to compete in international markets.

One of the consequences of this lack of cooperation for Africa’s 967 million people is the bureaucratic replication and currency-exchange issues that being divided into 53 countries entails. China, with 1.3 billion people, is just one country; and the European Union, with some 500 million people, functions as a single economic market, with most of its members sharing a single currency. If Africa’s small and diverse nations do not come together, they will never integrate properly into the world economy, and so will not reap the benefits of our globalised world.

Economic integration must be backed up by increased intra-regional trade; less than 4% of Africa’s trade is between African countries, compared to over 70% in Europe and over 50% in Asia. The International Monetary Fund credits Asian intra-regional trade as the main factor behind its recent export boom and strong economic growth. Africa, with its huge and often untapped markets, must follow the same path.

Africans themselves must tackle these issues, but our international partners have an important role to play. The debate over the failure of international aid to produce development, together with the current financial crisis, has added weight to arguments against development assistance. But the argument should not be about whether to provide aid – no one can question the many successes that aid has brought, or its importance in providing a safety net for those who would otherwise be left to suffer.

The argument should instead be focused on how to get the most effective results out of aid, both for the recipients and for a donor country’s tax-payers. Aid, I believe, is best focused on infrastructure – the bridges, roads, Internet cables, and power stations that will help our economies to grow and allow us to trade more easily with each other. Accompanying this should be a focus on the “software” of development – health and education. If aid satisfies basic governance conditionality and is directed at these vital areas, Africa will have a far greater chance of progressing.

For too long there has been international dismay at the state of governance in Africa; corruption and at times a complete lack of accountability are blamed for all of Africa’s ills. Although this is largely the case, no one can claim that Africans have a monopoly on governance failures. The current financial crisis offers a perfect example, as it was poor governance in the banking sector that brought so many of the world’s great economies to their knees.

Moreover, while the international community is quick to pounce on African leaders for governance failures, it seems less enthusiastic about examining its role in the flight of African assets. Europe and America were slow to enact legislation barring their companies from bribing foreign government officials in return for mining concessions or other advantages, and there has been limited enforcement of the rules. Similarly, European and American banks keep the resources that are looted from Africa.

Then there is the unresolved problem of trade barriers. If African products are forced to compete in markets skewed toward European and American producers, Africans do not have a fair chance to develop. The issue of trade barriers speaks directly to the question of whether there is a genuine international commitment to Africa’s development.

Finally, there is the problem of limited resources for international peacekeeping operations in Africa – always with disastrous results. In my own country, Sudan, and its western state of Darfur, African Union (AU) troops try to protect civilians. While the AU is providing soldiers to police the conflict, the United Nations and the international community have been tasked with providing resources and equipment, which are widely viewed as inadequate.

No one denies that Africa has many problems. But those problems should not be allowed to obscure the continent’s many success stories – much less to be defined as Africa’s alone.