Ghana sixth best in Africa

Front Page: Daily Graphic, October 5, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
GHANA has been ranked the sixth best governed country in Africa.
This is an improvement on its position as far as the governance index is concerned. When it was first released in 2007, Ghana occupied the eighth position.
According to the annual Index of African Governance report released by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Governance, Mauritius, The Seychelles and Cape Verde, all small islands, are the continent’s three best governed countries.
At the bottom of the list are Chad, The Sudan and Somalia.
Reacting to the latest rankings, a senior lecturer of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, Legon, Mr Kwesi Jonah, told the Daily Graphic that it was a good reflection the progress Ghana had made in its democratic path, saying that “the ranking is very real”.
He said although the citizenry often doubted the progress made so far, the ranking showed that Ghana was better off than a lot of African countries.
He noted that Ghanaians had had the opportunity to hold elections and also change governments on two occasions since 2000.
Mr Jonah said in many African countries, the people had not been able to hold any elections, with some elections degenerating into conflicts, citing Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia and Kenya as examples.
He said although Ghanaians often had reservations about the democracy in the country, “let us all resolve to move forward to be number one on the continent”.
That, he said, would require civil society organisations, political parties, the Ghana Armed Forces and the media in particular to continue to champion the cause of democratic values for Ghanaians to appreciate the importance of democracy.
Mr Jonah, however, said Ghana needed to tackle the problem of political corruption with all the seriousness it deserved to move upward.
He said Ghana’s position on the corruption index, as issued by Transparency International, was not good for its democracy.
He also suggested that efforts must be intensified to tackle poverty in the country.
When the Governance Index report was first published in 2007, Ghana was eighth, making the current position an improvement on the first.
For the first time, the index included North African countries and Tunisia and Algeria were in the top 10. Even though Tunisia’s human rights record has been described as ‘appalling’, the country is noted to rate so well in terms of human development, economic opportunity and security, which scores compensated for the human rights record.
South Africa, however, slipped from fifth to ninth. The report noted that that was due to the country’s low scores in the areas of respect for civil and political rights and the rule of law.
Zimbabwe ranked 45th out of the 53 nations surveyed. Top oil producers Angola and Nigeria landed at 46th and 38th, respectively.
The data for this survey was collected in 2007 and, therefore, the election related violence in Zimbabwe in 2008 was not covered.
The survey is funded by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation of the wealthy Sudanese telecom investor by that name. He is expected to release his own version of the report next week.
The 2009 Index of African Governance used 57 indicators, including maternal mortality, gross domestic product per capita, respect for human rights and judicial independence, to rate governance in the continent’s 53 nations. It was co-ordinated by Robert Rotberg and Rachel Gisselquist.
The authors have said in a statement, “Bettering the lives of all of Africa’s peoples is the overriding purpose of the index,” adding, “By noting which indicators lag and which have advanced, governments can improve the outcomes for their populations.”