(London) He took an AIDS test publicly despite a deep stigma in Africa against the disease.

He pressed to cut the prevalence of mothers passing the HIV virus onto their babies. He fought to make more anti-retroviral drugs available. Festus Gontebanye Mogae, the former president of Botswana, was honored Monday with a multimillion-dollar leadership prize for his campaign to tackle one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates.

Mogae, who led the diamond-rich south African nation from 1998 until resigning this year, won the 2008 Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. The prize, in its second year, is aimed at recognizing and promoting good governance in Africa.

He has already has received widespread praise for tackling Botswana’s high HIV/AIDS infection rate – at an estimated 23.9 percent of the adult population, it’s the world’s second-highest behind Swaziland.

In sharp contrast to other African leaders, Mogae addressed the issue of AIDS in almost every one of his speeches.

Today, the number of children being infected with HIV by their mothers in Botswana has dropped from as high as about 40 percent to 4 percent and anti-AIDS drugs are reaching most of those who need it. Lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs are known locally as “Mogae’s tablets.”

Mogae will receive $5 million over 10 years and $200,000 annually for life thereafter. The foundation giving the prize will consider granting a further $200,000 annually for 10 years to causes that Mogae supports.

The foundation was created by Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born billionaire who founded the African telecommunications company Celtel International.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who chairs the prize committee, praised Mogae for his leadership on health and economic issues.

“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,” Annan said.

While Africans may know Botswana as one of the continent’s most politically and economically stable countries, it might be best known in the West as the setting of Alexander McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” novels.

An Oxford-educated economist, Mogae presided over a decade of economic growth and political stability as he privatized parts of the economy, notably the airlines and the telecommunications industry.

Botswana is the world’s largest producer of diamonds, and Mogae was instrumental in making sure the country benefited from its mineral wealth by venturing into cutting and polishing diamonds instead of just exporting uncut stones and missing most of the profit.

The prize is awarded to democratically elected former heads of state from sub-Saharan African countries who have left office within the last three years.

Mozambique’s former president, Joaquim Chissano, won the prize last year. He ruled Mozambique for 18 years, leading that country out of a devastating civil war and overseeing its transition from Marxism to a free economy.

“(The prize causes) people to speak more about governance, to think more about governance,” Chissano said Monday in a telephone interview from Geneva, where he was speaking about aid and development at an international forum.

“People are speaking about good governance now more in Africa than in the past,” he said.