Togolese international, Emmanuel Sheyi Adebayor and seven other top distinguished African personalities received the prestigious Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize (LAAP) here over the weekend.

The others were Mosima Gabriel Sexwale, former South African freedom fighter and businessman, and Leymah Gbowee, a founding member and Liberian Coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Network (WIPNET) of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP).

Adebayor“An essential lesson already learnt by the Millennium Excellence Foundation in executing its mandate of unearthing and honoring excellence has been the great encouragement that it gives to Africans to integrate,” said Ambassador James Victor Gbeho, former Ghana’s Foreign Minister and Chairman of the Millennium Excellence Foundation (MEF), organizers of the awards.

He later explained the rationale for instituting the annual awards in an interview with Xinhua that it was to inspire the continent to unite and work harder for progress.

“Well, it is to showcase and unearth talents and excellence in our communities and to hold it out as an example to the rest of Africa. It is meant to inspire people to get to know what the other person is doing in different parts of Africa in the economic, political, social and cultural fields,” Gbeho stated.

A Zambian and Co-founder and Managing Director of the Zambian Energy Corporation (Zam-En), Hanson Sindowe; the CEO of Keroche, Tabitha Karanja; as well as Ghana’s former Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Kwabena Duffuor, together with two other Ghanaians were among the awardees.

Two African leaders, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and King Mohammed VI of Morocco, also had plaques awarded them in absentia for their exemplary leadership.

“It’s a big day in my life because obviously when you are doing something; whatever the right hand is doing, the left hand is supposed not to be talking about it. But people recognize what I am doing for Africa, what I am doing for the youth,” an elated Adebayor told Xinhua.

Sexwale lauded the MEF for instituting the awards scheme which he believed could help bring Africans more closely.

“The Foundation for Excellence has outdone itself by creating this kind of awards, to connect Africans; to bring us together so that we can see how to exchange ideas.” Enditem