Friday, February 7, 2025

Botswana still in front rank of best governed countries

The seventh Mo Ibrahim Index African Governance (IIAG) released on Monday indicated Botswana as the 2nd best governed nation in Africa out of the 52 African countries.

The index ranked Mauritius top in the region scoring 82.9 points.

The top ten countries were Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa and Tunisia.

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).
According to the report, since 2000, Botswana has shown its biggest improvement in the category of Human Development, education and health.

Botswana ranks 1st in the category Safety & Rule of Law and sub-categories Rule of Law and Accountability.

Under human development, Botswana scored 81.3 moving up by 14 points since 2000.

In education Botswana occupies 4th position out of 52 having scored 76.9.However Botswana is not performing well in the rights category without any change in rank since 2000 with the score falling by 3.1 points since 2000.

The countries that have experienced overall governance improvement since 2000 are today home to 94% of people living on the continent. Regionally Southern Africa is the best performing region at the overall governance level. This has been the case every year since 2000. Eight out of the 12 countries in Southern Africa score above the continental average (51.6).

The region has improved its overall score by +4.3 since 2000. Three categories have shown improvements since 2000: Participation & Human Rights (+1.4), Sustainable Economic Opportunity (+6.7) and Human Development (+9.9). Safety & Rule of Law is the only category that has declined since 2000 (-0.7). Zimbabwe is the lowest-ranking country in the region, ranking 47th out of 52 scoring 35.4.

Since 2000, the strongest improvements at continental level are registered in the categories of Human Development, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and, to a lesser extent, Participation & Human Rights.

Meanwhile the Safety & Rule of Law category has declined worryingly, showing year-on-year declines since 2010.

“Neither Afro-pessimism nor Afro-optimism do justice to modern Africa. This is now the age of Afro-realism – an honest outlook on our continent. It’s about a celebration of its achievements but also a pragmatic acknowledgement of the challenges that lie ahead,” said Mo Ibrahim, Chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

However the 2013 IIAG also reflected the growing complexity of the African landscape of how to secure sustainable progress.

“More than ever, equitable allocation of resources must be a priority for policy and decision making. Commitment to, and balance in each of the four IIAG categoriesÔÇôSafety & Rule of Law, Participation & Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development, is critical to secure improvement in the long-term,” stated the report.

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