#YNaija2013Review: The 10 most remarkable people in 2013? Feyi Fawehinmi shares his list

by Feyi Fawehinmi

Enrique Nieto, Mexico
Enrique Nieto, Mexico

When I was asked to put this list together, the theme that ran through my mind was ‘leadership’. So, with a couple of exceptions, here are ten people who impressed me with their leadership in 2013.

 

 

Enrique Pena Nieto

 

 

When you are elected the 57th President of Mexico, there is no point aiming for marginal revolutions. Pena Nieto understood this when he took office in December 2012 and accordingly he went for the jugular of structural reforms.

 

Working with all the parties in parliament, he designed a 95 point ‘Pact for Mexico’. He has since taken on the violent and entrenched teaching unions, and those in telecoms – directly confronting the mega wealthy Carlos Slim, the banking industry, lifting the ban on re-election of politicians (he won’t benefit from this as the presidency wasn’t included), breaking up the monopoly of Pemex the state oil company and wide ranging tax reforms.

 

 

Mexico is a difficult country to govern and none of these have been easy. Pena Nieto is a rather good-looking guy with boyish looks. Perhaps this led his opponents to underestimate him and he wrongfoot them. Whatever it was, he’s taken the current when it served. 

 

 

As our own President enters what is likely to be a lame duck year with more politicking than any actual governance, I look at Pena Nieto’s one year in office so far and wonder what might have been. The jury is still out of course. But people say ‘start as you mean to carry on’ no?

 

Angela Dorothea Merkel

 

 

Germany’s Understated Chancellor led her party to a landslide 41.5% victory in the country’s recent federal elections. Ask Barack Obama if it’s easy to actually increase your vote share after a term in office.

 

 

And it’s not like she has led Germany and Europe at a quiet time in history. The very foundations of the monetary union have been shaken to its core and the whole project questions. But Fraulein Merkel has brought a steady hand to the role, no gaffes or misquotes, just quiet competence.

 

She’s good.

 

 

Chiewetelu Umeadi Ejiofor

 

 

Recently ‘Love, Actually’ was on TV and I was reminded that Chiwetel was in it. The movie came out in 2003. Many wont even remember he also played a part in ‘Amistad’ which came out in 1997.

 

 

Finally, Chiwetel has had the year that has been coming to him. It’s not a question of him getting nominated for an Oscar now but whether or not he will win it. From ’12 Years A Slave’ to ‘Half Of a Yellow Sun’ to ‘A Season In The Congo’, it’s been an outstanding year for a man who is clearly very hardworking.

 

On Sunday 2 March, 2014, I am going to stay up to cheer the man when he walks up to collect the Best Actor in a Leading Role gong.

 

Amen.

 

 

Narendra Modi

 

 

I’ve been a fan of Mr Modi for a long time. But even I never believed he could surmount the incredible odds stacked against him on the path to becoming India’s Prime Minister. I’m happy to have been proved wrong.

 

 

He’s going into next year’s elections with a very strong chance of leading his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory. The man comes with plenty of baggage so all this is only possible because of his stellar record of performance in his 12 years as leader of the Indian state of Gujarat.

 

Impossible is nothing perhaps.

 

 

Stephen Keshi

 

 

I was a big Keshi doubter. But this particular humble pie tastes quite nice.

 

The man has done exactly what he was hired to do – win the African Nations Cup, and then he qualified for the World Cup in some style.

 

 

And we now know he’s done all this working in circumstances that are less than ideal. To put it mildly.

 

Nigeria will go to the Brazil World Cup not overconfidently but with reasons to be optimistic. And it’s all Keshi.

 

 

Malala Yousafzai

 

 

Hard to believe this woman is only 16 years old, and parts of her story sound truly incredible. But it is undeniable that she has seized the moment handed to her and gotten her message out.

 

 

As is often the case, people who practice an ideology of hatred, such as the Taliban, end up creating heroes out of their intended victims. Her autobiography ‘I Am Malala’ won’t have been voted the best of the year by Goodreads users if the Taliban had simply tolerated her in Pakistan. Instead by their actions, they have conspired to hand her a global platform to show them up.

 

In 2013 the world met Malala. And the world liked her. Very much.

 

Edward Snowden

 

I have to give grudging respect to Mr Snowden. I am not a fan, but I have slowly come to understand that the man isn’t some publicity seeker. At least it’s clear to me that fame wasn’t his only motivation.

 

 

His leaks have been careful and considered. He hasn’t simply dumped all the information in the public domain and his Christmas Day message on the UK’s Channel 4 was quite thoughtful.

 

 

“Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying”.

 

 

Regardless of the practicalities, that was a good line.

 

 

Tidjane Thiam

 

 

In early 2010, six months after taking over the top job at the UK’s largest insurer, Tidjane Thiam launched an audacious bid to buy AIG’s Asian insurance arm for $35.5bn. The deal quickly unraveled and ended up costing Prudential its Chairman and £377m in fees. The regulator censured Tidjane himself this year and Prudential fined a further £30m for not disclosing the deal to them in time.

 

But for the man who fled the Ivory Coast after fighting broke out there, he has kept his head down and delivered a quietly efficient performance since that episode. The share price has more than doubled and profits have nearly doubled as well.

 

In terms of the AIA deal, he has been proven correct to have tried to go into Asia, but for timing.

 

 

Not bad for the FTSE 100’s first black CEO.

Always nice when the first black person to go somewhere raises the bar so high, he earns his respect purely on merit.

 

 Jack Ma

 

 If you don’t know who Jack Ma is, I will let you off but only this year. Don’t wait till the bandwagon is at full speed before jumping on it. The boss of China’s Alibaba is leading a firm with some of the most frightening growth metrics anyone has ever seen.

 

Take Yu E Bao (translation: account balance treasure), the wealth management product he launched in June this year through his company’s Alipay. In just 6 months, it now has over 30 million customers and $16bn in deposits. And, for its user friendliness amongst others, the Chinese people are said to be in love.

 

You have to respect a man who can mobilise deposits at such a frightening rate. You’ll be hearing a lot more about him in 2014 – and beyond.

 

Cecil Kyenge

 

 

In April this year, she was named Italy’s Minister of Integration, the country’s first ever-black minister. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this forced many people to deal with their prejudices. It wasn’t pretty.

 

 

She’s had bananas thrown at her (to which she charmingly responded: people should not waste food in a struggling economy) and mannequins stained with fake blood dumped outside the venue of a speech she was due to give. Oh, and another politician pretty much called her a prostitute on his Facebook page.

 

It is perhaps shocking to most of us that a black person in a supposedly first world country is having to deal with this kind of open prejudice in 2013. Personally, I am only happy it’s all coming out in the wash.

 

 

And even more so that their die-hard prejudice is up against a woman like Kyenge. They won’t win.

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (2)

  1. I love this list. I would add Aminata Toure sha 🙂

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