Africa: Mauritius Ranked Top by Mo Ibrahim Foundation

By Eric Sande

A recent ranking released on Monday October 4 by Dr Abdalla Hamdok, the director for governance and public administration at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, indicated Mauritius as the best governed country in Africa.

The top 10 nations are the Seychelles, Botswana, Cape Verde, South Africa, Namibia, Ghana, Tunisia, Lesotho and Egypt.

The index evaluated the delivery of public goods and services to citizens by governments and non-state actors across 88 indicators.

The governance indicators were grouped into four categories — safety and rule of law (personal safety, rule of law, accountability and corruption, national security), participation and human rights (participation, rights, gender), sustainable economic opportunity (public management, private sector, infrastructure, environment and rural sector) and human development (health and welfare).

Africa however, scored dismally in political rights and participation, with fears that it could be going back to the era of coups d’ état as witnessed recently in Madagascar, Guinea and Niger.

“We have seen from evidence and experience across the world that discrepancies between political governance and economic management are unsustainable in the long term. If Africa is going to continue to make progress, we need to pay attention to the rights and safety of citizens,” said Mo Ibrahim Foundation founder and chairman Mo Ibrahim.

The report indicated that Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy did well in health and welfare, climbing from 44 to 54 per cent, and maintained the gender rating at 65 per cent. The report, however, indicated that Kenya being one of the partners of East Africa Community (EAC) degenerated to rank (27) as its member partners Tanzania (15) and Uganda (24), registered tremendous improvement.

The officials expressed optimism that Kenya was expected to do well in the next ranking after the country voted in a new constitution. They said that the 2010 rating was at some point affected by the 2007 post-election violence.