Dar es Salaam. The revelation by President John Magufuli that he earns only Sh9 million a month has cast into the spotlight the salaries of heads of state across Africa and the eastern African region in particular.
In Africa, Mr Magufuli’s
pay is less than a tenth of that of his Cameroonian counterpart and just
about a quarter that of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta.Mr Kenyatta
earns Sh1.4 million while his deputy William Ruto is entitled to between
Sh1 million and Sh1.4 million per month.
It means that
even Kenya’s deputy president is better paid than most African
presidents who do not receive even a million shillings monthly.
Cameroonian
president Paul Biya tops the list of the highest paid heads of state in
Africa with a monthly salary of Sh111.3 million. Mr Biya has been in
office for three and a half decades. Mr Biya’s salary is close to that
of top corporate executives in Kenya such as the Kenya Commercial Bank
Group’s CEO Joshua Oigara who revealed two years ago that he earns
Sh102.9 million monthly in salary and allowances.
Mr
Biya is followed by Morocco’s King Mohammed and South Africa’s Jacob
Zuma, the only other African heads of state who get a monthly pay in
excess of Sh42 million.
Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni is the
highest earning East African head of state with a monthly salary of
Sh31.5 million, followed closely by Mr Kenyatta with a monthly pay of
Sh29.4 million.
Rwanda’s Paul Kagame comes a distant third, earning half of what his Kenyan counterpart gets.Only nine earn above Sh21 million.
Research by the Business Daily has revealed that only nine African heads of state earn more than Sh21 million a month.
Bottom of the list is Sierra Leone’s Ernest Koroma who pockets an equivalent of Sh2.1 million a month.
According
to the office of the president of Sierra Leone, Mr Koroma took a
voluntary 50 per cent pay cut in 2015 to help fund the fight against
Ebola in the country.
Other African states whose presidents earn less than Sh4.2 million a month include Guinea, Cape Verde, Tunisia and Senegal.
Mr
Zuma, who earns 22 times what an average South African gets, had his
annual salary pushed up by 130,000 South African rands in 2015, an
equivalent of Sh18.9 million, is a trend that is common among African
leaders including Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe who saw his pay in 2010 jump
four-fold.
However, other African leaders such as Hage
Geingob of Namibia, Mr Buhari of Nigeria, Abdel Fattah of Egypt have all
taken pay cuts of up to 50 per cent and directed the money be used to
fund other needy sectors of their economies.
In Kenya,
Mr Kenyatta promised a 20 per cent pay reduction for him and 10 per cent
for his Cabinet in a bid to lower the country’s “unsustainable wage
bill”.
However, it still remains unclear if the pay
reduction were effected.According to Forbes magazine, Mr Lee Hsien Loong
the Singaporean prime minister is the highest paid head of state in the
world pocketing an equivalent of Sh306.6 million monthly. He is
followed by CY Leung of Hong Kong, with an equivalent of Sh96.6 million
per month while the American President is entitled to an equivalent of
Sh71.4 million a month, making him third on the global list.
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