By Alex Kiprotich in London

How much does a billionaire carry in his wallet, I wonder as I set off for lunch with Mo Ibrahim, Sudanese telecoms mogul turned philanthropist.

I am determined to ask him the question, though it will have to wait until the end of our meeting at the Princess Garden, a Chinese restaurant in Bond Street, Central London.

I am worried since I’m two minutes late and thinking how to apologise. In the hurry, I almost trip the doorman.

I am therefore relieved when the receptionist tells me that he has not yet arrived.

As I sit in the restaurant’s lounge waiting for the billionaire, I toy with the idea of telling him, when he arrives, that he has lived up to the true African spirit of lateness. Though his daughter, Hadeel, had reassured me he is amiable, I’m not convinced… no African talks ill of his/her parents.

During our conversation, she had remarked that journalists were quick to criticise her dad without realising the sacrifices he’d made. Ibrahim is the founder of Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which awards retiring presidents $5 million over 10 years and $200,000 per annum for life thereafter if they meet a set criterion of good governance and hand over of power democratically.

So was I among the journalists she was unhappy with? May be. After all I had written two articles – one for my paper back home, The Standard On Sunday and another for UK’s The Independent, bluntly telling Ibrahim to stop dangling his millions in the name of democracy.

My stream of thought is cut short when a man of brown complexion, balding head, and stout figure walks in.

He looks familiar, but I am hesitant since I did not see a Rolls Royce dropping him, nor overzealous bodyguards leading the way. He is alone.

He stops to make inquiries from the receptionist who then points in my direction. I am now certain he is the one. I stand and walk up to him as he turns to face me. He shakes my hand the African style – firmly – then apologises for the delay, as the steward leads us to our table.

His straightforward manner is disarming. His simplicity is a rarity among wealthy Africans. He ushers me to a chair as he removes his checked bluish jacket and hangs it on his chair.

Before he picks the menu, he asks me if there is anything I do not eat.

"I am a vegetarian," I reply.

For a moment he puts the menu back on the table and leans towards me, his left hand on my lean shoulder.

"I have never met an African or a Kenyan who is a vegetarian. How can that be yet you come from a community of cattle keepers?" he asks.

He helps me choose the food, instructing the waiter to bring my order first. By now he is no longer the billionaire I was waiting for at the lounge… he assumes a father figure, too caring.

As we wait for food to be served, he engages me in insightful anecdotes about Africa interspersed with digressions into when he came to London as a student with only $100.He tells me that, four decades, ago he lived where I now live.

When the food is served, I realise that Ibrahim is one billionaire who has not let good fortune separate him from his humble roots. Instead of opting to use the sophisticated culinary, he asks the waiter to get us wet towels.

"This is a meeting of Africans and we do not need to use their culinary because we have ours… hands," he says, with wide smile.

As we talk, I look for anything to place him in the class of billionaires but see nothing. The shirt he is wearing resembles mine. I got it from M&S store for £25. The cream khaki trouser is nothing out of the ordinary, and he does not have a wristwatch. May be he is not interested in the trappings of wealth I conclude. After all, his background was modest. His father was a clerk, and spent his formative years in Alexandria in Egypt before moving to Britain on scholarship.

As we talk, he brings up several topics but his foundation. Was he picking my mind?

"So how is your foundation?" I ask.

"There you go," he says, as he gives me a vegetable samosa roll.

"I am happy the foundation has lived up to its mandate by improving governance in Africa," he says.

He says one of the reasons corruption and dictatorship thrive in Africa is because leaders look at retirement as they would the edge of a cliff, beyond which lies a dizzying fall towards retribution and relative poverty. "So the money is to tell our leaders, look here, there is life after office," he says. He talks passionately about changing perceptions among enlightened Africans who are now holding their leaders into account. "That is the reason we will be launching the youth fellowship programme," he says.

The programme entails identifying four young and promising African leaders and attaching them to top CEOs in the world, for a year.

I then pop the question that has been on my mind the whole time, "How much are you worth?" He is taken aback but answers the question all the same.

"I don’t know but I know if I get a winner yearly for the governance prize I can pay them the sum set by the prize committee for as long as it takes," he says.

After that clever answer, I am not sure whether to ask the second question. I convince myself that I have to.

"How much money do you have in your wallet? I ask as we rise to go.

The question takes him by surprise.

He is not sure how much he has and we sit down as he counts. "Five hundred and twenty pounds," he declares with a burst of laughter slapping my shoulder.

"Alex you are a cheeky one," he says. After about 90 minutes of conversation with a man who says there is no magic in success but focus and hard work, I realise that his daughter was, after all, right.

As he walks out of the hotel door I remember I did not ask him about sticking to ‘African time’ in a white man’s country.

Source: The Standard

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