London/Johannesburg - Former Botswana president Festus Gontebanye Mogae, who received the 5-million dollar Mo Ibrahim African leadership award Monday, is a British-educated economist credited with using his country's mineral wealth to advance the lot of the poor.

He is also a champion of struggle against HIV/AIDS and was the first African leader, in a bid to combat the stigma around the pandemic on the continent, to publicly test for the virus.

Mogae was born on August 21, 1939 in Serowe in eastern Botswana, according to a biography of the statesman in Profiles of People in Power; the World's Government Leaders, published by Europa Publications.

He studied economics at the University of Oxford and Sussex before returning to Botswana in 1968, two years after its independence from Britain.

Mogae served as executive director at the International Monetary Fund and on the boards of various companies, including De Beers Botswana diamond mining company, before being made central bank governor in 1980.

He was appointed to government in the late 1980s by former president Ketumile Masire and elected to the National Assembly in 1994.

In April 1998 he succeeded Masire as president and steered the ruling Botswana Democratic Party to a landslide victory in elections in 1999 and a reduced, albeit outright majority in 2004.

In April 2008 he stepped down at the end of his maximum two five-year terms in a peaceful transition of power to his vice-president Ian Khama that contrasted sharply with the refusal of his neighbour Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to relinquish power.

Botswana is the world's largest supplier of diamonds. Mogae is credited with using that gem wealth to make his citizenry Africa's wealthiest in per-capita-income terms.

"Botswana demonstrates how a country with natural resources can promote sustainable development with good governance, in a continent where too often mineral wealth has become a curse," former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said Monday in announcing the prize winner.

Mogae had stuck to his promise to invest the money in job creation and poverty reduction, Annan said on behalf of the Mo Ibrahim prize committee.

Annan also praised Mogae's leadership on HIV/AIDS. With an estimated 24 per cent of adults infected, Botswana, a country of 1.7 million people, has the world's second-highest HIV/AIDS infection rate after Swaziland.

Mogae clamped down on alcohol sales, which he blamed for risky sexual behaviour. Botswana was also the first country in Africa to distribute life-prolonging AIDS drugs through its public health system.

"President Mogae's outstanding leadership has ensured Botswana's continued stability and prosperity in the face of an HIV/AIDS pandemic which threatened the future of his country and people," Annan said.

Mogae was not without critics, however. The government's attempts from the late 1990s to relocate thousands of Bushmen from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, including by cutting off water supplies to the group, drew widespread international condemnation. The Bushmen won the right to return after a lengthy court battle.

Since he stepped down, Mogae has continued his campaigning against HIV/AIDS by launching Champions for an HIV-free Generation.

Last month he was also appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as one of two special envoys on climate change. (dpa)