An African Scorecard Governance Counts
Saturday, December 06, 2008 12:04 PM
(Source: International Herald Tribune)trackingBy Robert I. Rotberg

African governance is getting better. That is a major, surprising, finding of the second annual Index of African Governance, produced at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and released last month.

Given continued conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 3 million hapless citizens have been killed in civil war since 1990; intensified mayhem in the Sudan, where at least 300,000 Arabs and Africans have been slaughtered since 2003; continued antagonism between north and south in the Ivory Coast, in the Nigerian Delta, in northern Uganda and in Somalia - no governance or bad governance might seem more the sub-Saharan African trend than good governance.

This year's Index, however, shows that 34 of 48 governments have begun delivering improved results to their citizens. Multiparty systems are now more normal in Africa; most countries demand that their leaders step down after two terms. Most economies are open, with old-fashioned socialist ideas now largely junked. Millions of Africans are on the Internet .

Liberia, the most improved country in Africa according to the Index, moved up in rank from 44th to 38th place since last year, largely due to the leadership of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first woman head of state, and to her efforts of post- conflict reconstruction. Countries like Eritrea, with appalling human rights records and suppression of press freedom, moved down strikingly, from 39th to 41st. In both cases, and in nearly all of the others in the Index, political leadership quality helps to determine performance and final national achievements.

The top performers in the Index were the countries, many small, that have been well managed since their achievement of independence from colonial rule. Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Gabon, Ghana, Sao Tome and Senegal lead the list.

In each of those countries citizens are comparatively wealthy, mostly literate, safe (except for South Africa), free of domestic conflict and accustomed to solid rule of law performance with moderate corruption. Gabon is the outlier in this group, with low scores in the Index for participatory fairness but high scores for security (in a tightly run state).

The African countries internally at war comprise the last 10, from top to bottom: Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia, Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Angola, Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.