hh We live in a world where almost everything has been placed on the market. Almost everything has acquired a price tag, including recognition, prestige and, increasingly, awards.
Awards were once regarded as powerful instruments of recognition. They were meant to celebrate excellence, inspire others, acknowledge contribution and preserve the stories of people who had made a meaningful difference in society. An award was supposed to say something important about the character, contribution and impact of its recipient.
But somewhere along the way, the awards industry itself became commercialised.
Today, it is not unusual to receive an email informing you that you have been nominated for an award because of your achievements. The message may be flattering. It may tell you how distinguished you are, how your contribution has been noticed and how deserving you supposedly are of recognition.
You are then asked to accept the nomination.
So far, so good.
Then comes the catch.
You are informed that you have been allocated an introductory number of voting tokens and that people can vote for you to become a winner. Once those initial tokens have been exhausted, you are encouraged to purchase additional votes. The more money you put into the system, the more votes you can accumulate.
In other words, recognition becomes a competition of purchasing power.
This is fundamentally different from a system in which members of the public vote at their own cost, perhaps through an SMS or digital platform, because they genuinely believe that a particular individual deserves recognition. In the commercialised model, the nominee, their organisation, friends, family or supporters are effectively encouraged to finance their own victory.
I have even encountered awards where nominees are required to pay a fee simply to accept their nomination.
And then there is perhaps the most troubling practice of all: awards where virtually every nominee ultimately receives some form of recognition, regardless of whether there has been a meaningful, rigorous and independent adjudication process.
If everyone wins, what exactly does winning mean?
These practices do more than undermine the credibility of awards. They potentially damage the reputation of the very people the awards are supposedly designed to honour.
An award is not merely a trophy. It is a statement of credibility.
When an award can effectively be bought, the recipient may walk away with a beautiful certificate, trophy or title, but the public is entitled to ask a simple question: Was this recognition earned, or was it purchased?
That question matters.
It matters because genuine achievers should not have their reputations inadvertently associated with questionable recognition systems. It matters because institutions, companies and individuals use awards as signals of credibility. And it matters because society needs trusted mechanisms for identifying and celebrating excellence.
We have seen a similar phenomenon with the proliferation of dubious institutions offering honorary doctorates. An individual receives an invitation informing them that, based on their achievements, they have been selected to receive an honorary doctorate. They are then required to pay a registration fee, attend a short workshop or programme and eventually participate in a ceremony where the qualification is conferred.
The problem is not recognition itself. The problem is the commercialisation of recognition to the point where the distinction between achievement and transaction becomes blurred.
This is precisely why the African Genius Awards – founded by Dr Sifiso Falala – hare deliberately different. Dr Falala is the author of the recently published “How Africa Defeats Itself”.
The African Genius Awards are built on a simple but powerful principle: recognition must follow merit, not money.
The awards do not exist to create another commercial platform where recognition is sold to those who can afford it. They exist to identify, celebrate and profile Africans whose work, ideas, leadership, creativity, innovation and contribution demonstrate genuine genius and have the potential to inspire the continent and the world.
There are several fundamental principles that distinguish the African Genius Awards from many of the practices that have brought the awards industry into disrepute.
Public nomination, not self-promotion
First, the African Genius Awards place the power of nomination in the hands of the public.
Awardees are nominated by members of the general public who believe that an individual or organisation deserves recognition. This is important because it shifts the starting point of the process away from self-promotion and towards public acknowledgement.
A nomination is therefore not simply an individual’s declaration that they deserve an award. It is someone else saying: “I have witnessed this contribution, I recognise its value, and I believe this person deserves to be considered.”
That distinction is fundamental.
The African Genius Awards therefore seek to uncover people whose contributions may not necessarily be accompanied by powerful public relations machinery, large communications budgets or extensive personal networks.
There are Africans doing extraordinary things in communities, businesses, universities, creative industries, science, technology, agriculture, education, public service and countless other fields who may never nominate themselves for an award.
They should not be excluded simply because they do not know how to market themselves.
The public nomination process creates an opportunity for society itself to identify its heroes, innovators and problem-solvers.
Adjudication is about merit, not votes
Second, and perhaps most importantly, the African Genius Awards are not decided by whoever can accumulate the largest number of votes or purchase the most voting tokens.
This is where the awards fundamentally depart from the increasingly commercialised “popularity contest” model.
Popularity and excellence are not necessarily the same thing.
The person with the largest social-media following is not automatically the person who has made the greatest contribution. The person with the wealthiest network is not necessarily the most innovative. And the person capable of mobilising the most people to vote is not necessarily the person who has demonstrated the greatest genius.
The African Genius Awards therefore rely on an independent panel of experts to assess the nominations.
The adjudication process is designed to interrogate the substance behind the nomination: the nominee’s contribution, impact, innovation, leadership, creativity, relevance and potential to inspire others.
The question is not:
“How many people can you persuade to vote for you?”
The question is:
“What have you done that makes you deserving of recognition?”
That is a profoundly different philosophy.
No nomination or administration fee
Third, neither the nominator nor the nominee is required to pay an administration fee to participate in the awards.
This is an important principle of accessibility and integrity.
Recognition should not become the preserve of those who can afford to pay for it.
If someone in a rural community identifies an extraordinary young innovator, farmer, educator, scientist, artist or entrepreneur, their nomination should have the same opportunity to be considered as that of someone nominated by a well-resourced organisation.
The absence of an administration fee helps ensure that the awards remain about the quality of the contribution rather than the financial capacity of the nominee or nominator.
Not everybody gets an award
There is another uncomfortable principle that is essential to credible awards: not everybody should win.
The African Genius Awards do not exist simply to distribute trophies.
Recognition has value precisely because it is selective.
If every nominee automatically receives an award, the distinction loses its meaning. If every participant receives a certificate, then the certificate becomes evidence of participation rather than evidence of exceptional achievement.
The African Genius Awards therefore recognise only those individuals and organisations whom the adjudication panel considers genuinely deserving.
That means some nominees will not win. And that is not a weakness of the awards. It is one of their strengths.
A credible awards system must have the courage to say that while many people may be doing good work, only some contributions meet the threshold for recognition in a particular category in a particular year.
The purpose is not to make everyone feel good. It is also to identify excellence.
Institutional credibility matters
The African Genius Awards have also benefited over many years from endorsement by respected academic institutions, including the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg.
Such institutional associations are important because credibility cannot simply be manufactured through branding, expensive ceremonies or impressive-looking trophies.
Credibility is built over time.
It is built through transparent processes, credible partnerships, respected adjudicators, consistent standards and the willingness to protect the integrity of the recognition being conferred.
The involvement and endorsement of established academic institutions therefore contributes to an ecosystem in which African genius is not merely celebrated ceremonially, but is connected to knowledge, research, innovation and intellectual development.
African genius must be discovered, not bought
There is a bigger idea behind the African Genius Awards.
Africa does not suffer from a shortage of talent.
We suffer, in many instances, from inadequate systems for identifying, nurturing, celebrating and connecting that talent.
There are brilliant Africans whose ideas have never received the recognition they deserve. There are community leaders changing lives without media coverage. There are entrepreneurs building businesses against extraordinary odds. There are scientists solving African problems. There are artists redefining culture. There are young people developing innovative solutions with very limited resources.
Their genius should not have to compete against someone’s marketing budget.
It should be discovered, interrogated and be independently adjudicated. And when it meets the required standard, it should be celebrated.
That is the philosophy behind the African Genius Awards.
The awards are therefore not simply another event on the increasingly crowded African awards calendar. They represent an attempt to restore meaning to the very idea of recognition.
In an environment where almost everything appears to have a price, the African Genius Awards insist that genius cannot be bought.
You cannot purchase your way onto the winners’ list. You cannot buy votes to manufacture merit. You cannot pay an administration fee to guarantee recognition. And you cannot assume that nomination automatically means an award.
Instead, you must demonstrate the substance behind the recognition. You must convince an independent panel of experts that your contribution matters. You must stand on the strength of your work. And ultimately, you must earn the distinction.
That is what makes an award meaningful.
Because at the end of the day, the true value of an award is not the trophy handed to the recipient on stage. It is the credibility that accompanies the name of the recipient when they walk off that stage.
The African Genius Awards seek to protect that credibility.
In doing so, they also seek to restore something that the awards industry risks losing: the belief that recognition should mean something.
Africa deserves awards that do more than decorate shelves.
Africa deserves awards that tell the world where excellence resides.
Africa deserves awards that discover the extraordinary among the ordinary.
Africa deserves awards that recognise people because of what they have contributed, not because of what they can afford.
And Africa deserves an awards system in which the most important currency is not money, votes or influence, but genius, merit, impact and contribution.
That is the difference.
The African Genius Awards do not sell recognition. They curate it.
And in a world where almost everything is on sale, that distinction matters.
Tujenge Afrika Pamoja! Let’s Build Africa Together!
Enjoy your weekend.
Saul Molobi (FCIM)
PUBLISHER: JAMBO AFRICA ONLINE
and
Group Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Brandhill Africa™
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