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President Pedro Verona Pires has been named as the winner of the 2011 Ibrahim prize for achievement in African leadership. According to a press statement availed to The Guardian yesterday by Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Ibrahim Prize is an annual USD5 million award paid over 10 years and USD200,000 annually for life thereafter. It said the Foundation would consider granting a further USD200,000 per year for 10 years towards public interest activities and good causes espoused by the laureate. Announcing the 2011 Ibrahim Laureate, prize committee chair Salim Ahmed Salim said: �The prize committee has been greatly impressed by President Verona Pires�s vision in transforming Cape Verde into a model of democracy, stability and increased prosperity. �Under his 10 years as president, the nation became only the second African country to graduate from the United Nation�s Least Developed category and has won international recognition for its record on human rights and good governance,� said Salim Salim. He explained that the president�s democratic credentials were further enhanced when he announced he was stepping down at the end of his second term. Dismissing outright suggestions that the Constitution could be altered to allow him to stand again, he said: �This is a simple matter of faithfulness to the documents that guide a state of law.� Throughout his long career President Verona Pires has been dedicated to the service of his people, including those in the diaspora, while retaining his humility and personal integrity.� The Ibrahim prize was established by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which is marking its 50th anniversary this year. Each laureate is selected by a prize committee comprising seven eminent individuals. The prize committee assesses democratically elected former executive heads of state or governments from sub-Saharan African countries who have served their term in office within the limits set by their country�s Constitution and have left office within the last three years. On hearing the outcome of the prize committee�s deliberations, Mo Ibrahim, who is the founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation said: �It is wonderful to see an African leader who has served his country from the time of colonial rule through to multiparty democracy, all the time retaining the interests of his people as his guiding principle. The fact that Cape Verde with few natural resources can become a middle income country is an example not just to the continent but to the world. President Pires embodies the type of leadership the prize is designed to recognise.� President Verona Pires follows Joaquim Chissano (2007) and Festus Mogae, (2008) as Ibrahim laureates. Nelson Mandela was made the honorary inaugural laureate in 2007. In 2009 and 2010 the prize committee, after in-depth review, did not select any winner. SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN