Sub-Saharan Africa
Strengthening African Governance: index of African governance result and rankings
Index of African governance 2009
Authors:
R.I. Rotberg; R.M. Gisselquist
Publisher:
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2009
The 2009 Index of African Governance seeks to measure the degree to which five categories of political goods - Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Opportunity; and Human Development - are provided within Africa’s 53 countries.
The Index offers a report card on the accomplishments of each government for the years being investigated. For those who would like separately to explore the performance of countries on various aspects of governance, the Index includes scores in each of the five categories.
The Index aims to provide more than an overall ranking of countries. Within each of its five broad categories, separate evaluations and report cards concerning the attainments of each of the 53 countries are offered. Further, within each category there are sub-categories, which can again be compared, country against country. The Index, in fact, comprises 57 separate markers capturing the performance of individual countries.
Highlights of the index include:
- The top performers are Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, and Botswana
- The worst performing ten countries are: Somalia, the Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire (because of continuing conflict in 2007, and other issues), the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Angola (despite its oil riches), Zimbabwe, and Guinea
- Just above Guinea, at numbers 37 through 43 are Ethiopia, Nigeria, Burundi, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Swaziland, and Congo (Brazzaville), in that order
- Nigeria, despite its vast oil wealth, suffers as in previous years by weak scores for safety and security, participation, rule of law, and human development.
The authors assert that the Index shows that many aspects of good governance are slow to change, despite policy reforms and the efforts of leaders. However, one of the fastest ways that authoritarian countries can improve their quality of governance, the paper continues, is to allow citizens to chose their leaders i.e., to bring to political office leaders chosen in free, fair, and competitive elections. Conversely, one of the fastest ways countries can reduce their quality of governance is to boot out elected leaders.
