President Festus Gontebanye Mogae
2008 Laureate
Citation & Achievements
President Mogae was awarded the second Ibrahim Prize for his role in maintaining and consolidating Botswana’s stability and prosperity in the face of an HIV/AIDS pandemic which threatened the future of his country and people.
Under President Mogae’s leadership, Botswana demonstrates how a country with natural resources can promote sustainable development with good governance, in a continent where too often mineral wealth has become a curse.
During his Presidency, Botswana achieved gender parity in tertiary education.
President Mogae prioritised combating the stigma associated with HIV and AIDS, and put in place one of Africa’s most progressive and comprehensive programmes for dealing with the disease, the result saw a decrease in HIV prevalence even after he left his post.
Highlights – timeline
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Leadership is not always about you, it is about people and often circumstances.Festus Mogae
Life after National Office
On 5 August 2008 Mogae launched the Champions for an HIV-free Generation, a group of renowned African leaders calling for their peers to rethink and step up efforts to prevent the spread of HIV.
Alongside Presidents Chissano and Mbeki, he has led the mediation on the dispute over the boundary along Lake Malawi between Malawi and Tanzania. On 28 February 2015 he led the Commonwealth observers for the Lesotho elections. In November 2015 he began his duties as South Sudan’s Chairperson of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission.
He is Chairperson of the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), and Chairman of the Barclays-Mogae Scholarship Fund. He is also a member of the Commission on HIV Prevention of UNAIDS and Commission on HIV and the Law of UNDP. He is the co-Chairman of the High Level Review of the Fiduciary Controls Panel of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria based in Geneva, Switzerland.
He is also a member of Club of Madrid, Trustee of African Wildlife Foundation, African Leadership Academy Global Advisory Council, Mary Robinson Foundation High Level Advisory Panel on Climate Change and the Africa Forum.
