Africa: The 2009 Results: Index of African Governance

Next, because this year we include all of Africa, including the countries of North Africa, is Tunisia, followed by Ghana, Algeria, Namibia, South Africa, and São Tomé and Príncipe, in tenth place.

Mauritius heads the list with a score of 86 points out of a perfect 100. It is an "all around" performer, ranking in the top three in all five categories of the Index. The next six countries all score in the 70s, and the final three dip slightly under 70. Scores are based on data for 2007, the latest year for which data are reasonably complete for all countries.

As the category scores demonstrate, Tunisia and Algeria score as well as they do overall despite very low scores on participation and respect for civil and political rights. South Africa scores well despite very low scores in safety and security. Indeed, all three of these countries are buoyed in the overall rankings by their relative wealth and development compared with other countries on the continent, as can be seen in the disaggregated scores.

Tunisia, for instance, has an appalling human rights record, but rates so well in terms of human development, economic opportunity, and security that those scores compensate for appropriately low results in the regard for human rights area.1 Indeed, the North African nation-states generally score relatively high overall, despite poor rankings in the participation and human rights category.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Gabon, this year in eleventh place, shows a similar trend, benefitting in the overall rankings by being secure, despite low participation scores. High income levels also give Gabon a big boost. South Africa, by contrast, does well because only in the safety sub-category does it perform abysmally, exhibiting very high homicide and crime rates.

At the bottom of this year's rankings, 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.

As some of our readers have highlighted to us, a narrower approach to governance is often useful and consistent with some other (but not all) projects on governance. Thus, this year we also display rankings according to this "traditional" or "narrow" governance approach in order to facilitate comparisons across studies (see page 23). This approach is equivalent just to our categories of "Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption" and "Participation and Human Rights." If we thus exclude "Safety and Security," "Sustainable Economic Development," and "Human Development," the high performing list is still led by Mauritius, with Cape Verde moving up to second place and Botswana in third, but the North African states do not do as well. Thus, by this narrower method, the top ten countries, based on 2007 scores, would be: Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, the Seychelles, Lesotho, Benin, and São Tomé and Príncipe. The bottom eleven countries would be: Somalia (number 53), the Sudan, Eritrea, Libya, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Chad, Guinea, and Egypt.

As in previous editions, this 2009 Index of African Governance has benefited from several improvements, and new and enhanced sources of data. The previous essay, "The Meaning of Governance," explains the core method employed in the 2009 Index of African Governance (and in the 2007 and 2008 Ibrahim Indexes), as well as the exact ways in which the 2009 Index has been improved. To make it possible carefully to study improvements and declines in governance for each country, all changes have been incorporated retrospectively for all years in the 2009 Index (2000, 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007). This report includes complete data on four years, and the full dataset is available through our website. Analysts, as per usual practice, should refer to the latest version of the data when making comparisons over time.

Improvements and Slippages

Looking at Index scores over time, the 2009 Index shows clearly 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 is to allow citizens to chose their leaders—i.e., to bring to political office leaders chosen in free, fair, and competitive elections.3 Conversely, one of the fastest ways countries can reduce their quality of governance is to boot out elected leaders. In addition, in assessing relative changes over time, it is also important to take into account a country's starting point: while countries at the top of the rankings certainly can improve their scores, dramatic year-to-year changes are more likely for countries in the middle and bottom of the rankings where there is more room for improvement.

In the latest two years covered in the Index (2006 and 2007), the "most improved" country in terms of governance scores was Mauritania, which returned to democratic rule after its 2005 coup through presidential elections in March 2007, and legislative elections at the end of 2006. While these elections were by no means perfect, they were judged to be generally free and fair by national and international observers. Mauritania's suspension from the African Union was lifted in 2007. (Mauritania's improvements, however, were unfortunately short-lived. In August 2008, the democratically elected president was overthrown in a military coup.)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which ranks near the bottom of the Index in all years, also showed improvement between 2006 and 2007. The inauguration of a new president and National Assembly, brought to office in elections judged to be generally free and fair (although also flawed) by the international community, made the difference. This improvement notwithstanding, as the Index illustrates, the DRC's security situation declined notably between these years, and it is in no way a governance success.

Looking at all years covered in the Index, from 2000 as compared to the most recent year (2007), the most improved country is Burundi, followed by Rwanda and Angola. Each of these post-conflict countries showed major improvements in terms of security between 2000 and 2007, continuing challenges notwithstanding. Burundi and Rwanda also retired their transitional governments and brought to office leaders chosen in elections, which were judged to be flawed, but at least partially free and fair, by most observers.

Anomalies and Chronological Notations on the 2009 Index

As was the case for the 2007 and 2008 Ibrahim Indexes of African Governance, this year's Index of African Governance is based on the most complete statistics available, which require a two year lag. The 2009 Index thus is based on international and locally acquired data for the 2007 year and does not reflect the myriad social, economic, and political upheavals affecting Africa during 2008 and 2009. We are aware of them, but cannot let these major changes distort our results, which depend on internationally supplied and locally supplied hard numbers that are simply unavailable in a consistent manner after 2007. The events and alterations of 2008 will be captured in next year's Index.

As a result, Zimbabwe's massive economic and political collapse and the terrible troubles of post-electoral Kenya are not fully captured in this year's results. Nor is the turmoil in Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania, the horrific results of war in the DRC, political shenanigans in other nation-states, and positive improvements in a few. For timely reports on these events, we refer readers to the very useful qualitative analyses provided by the International Crisis Group, Freedom House, the Institute for Security Studies, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, among other sources.

Somalia, in last place this year as it has been in all years of the Index, has slipped in scores as well, but that very low score may reflect the difficulty of gathering accurate numbers for a country that still lacks a government, and therefore (according to the methodology of this Index) cannot—by definition—supply political goods. This year the makers of the Index had intended to include Somaliland as a fifty-fourth African polity, breaking out that unrecognized, politically organized, de facto state from the the larger geographical expression of Somalia, but even local research carried out in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, could not supply sufficient data points to include Somaliland in our Index. At present, this insufficiency seems to reflect the difficulty of setting up a national statistics system from scratch rather than a lack of will or lack of cooperation with our researchers. Similarly, the Index is not able in this year to include Western Sahara, which is recognized by the African Union, but by few other international organizations.