Salaries Of African Presidents

Photo credit: Africa Review

When Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari recently announced that he and his deputy would take a pay cut, it was not entirely surprising for a man known for his austerity, and who faces a challenge cutting back the excess in the country’sFINANCES.


But President Buhari is not the first African leader to announce a pay-cut. In fact, it is a popular recourse for others trying to shore up their popularity, or facing tough economic times.

In Kenya, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto last year announced a voluntary 20 per cent salary cut and invited other top government officials to follow suit. A few did, reluctantly.

In Tunisia, former President Moncef Marzouki, then facing an economic crisis in the post-revolution period, announced a two-thirds pay cut, slicing his annual pay from around $176,868 to ‘just’ $58,956.

The Africa Review has compiled and analysed salaries of African leaders to try and see what they tell about the relationship between those in power and the governed. The data is the best obtainable version that could be found, either through the correspondents, or online.

The search shows that only a few countries make public what they pay their leaders – a key finding itself that suggests a lack of transparency.

In many African countries, the first thing leaders do when they come into power is to increase their pay: In Egypt, for instance, the president’s pay shot up from a paltry $280 per month, put in place by the austere Mohammed Morsy administration, to $5,900 per month just before General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi predictably won an election.

In other countries, leaders take a disproportionate share of the national income for their personal use. In Morocco, the Treasury spends, by one account, $1 million a day for King Mohammed VI’s 12 royal palaces and 30 private residences. That is on top of $7.7 million spent on an entourage of royal automobiles, and a monthly salary of $40,000 paid to the monarch.

In 2014, King Mswati of Swaziland increased his personal budget, which includes his salary and the welfare of his extensive family, by 10 per cent to $61 million, a significant chunk of the kingdom’s overall budget. As the royal budget isn’t debated or passed by Parliament, it automatically became law.

Some presidents have deceptively small salaries but have, personally or through family members, massive control over their countries’ resources. For example, President Eduardo dos Santos has a modest monthly salary of $5,000 but is widely believed to control a lot of the wealth produced from Angola’s oil-industry, and his family members own some of the biggest enterprises in the country.

Photo credit: Africa Review

The Africa Review was unable to establish the official salary for Teodoro Obiang’ Nguema Mbasogo, the long-serving president of the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, but it probably doesn’t matter.

With vast oil wealth and a population of less than a million, EquatorialGuinea has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and should be a first-world nation. Instead, most of its wealth ends up in the hands of its notoriously corrupt First Family.

By Africa Review team