Report: governance declines in Nigeria, other parts of Africa

The 2020 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), launched on Monday by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, highlights a decline in African governance performance for the first time since 2010. New data delivers a clear warning: governance progress in Africa has slowed since 2015, and declines for the first time in 2019. Deterioration in participation, rights, rule of law and security threatens improvements achieved in economic opportunities and human development. This is particularly concerning with the COVID-19 pandemic set to increase existing challenges and reduce hard-won gains. Excerpts:

Africa’s Overall Governance progress slows, and score declines for first time in 2019 The 2020 IIAG, with an updated framework and strengthened indicators, shows that although African governance has improved since 2010, progress has slowed in the last five years. Indeed, the 2019 Overall Governance score concerningly registers a year-on-year decline for the first time in the decade. Additionally, the continent’s path towards sound governance is uneven, with economic opportunity and human development improving at the expense of worrying declines in participation, rights, inclusion, rule of law and security. This is all the more concerning with COVID-19 set to worsen already existing challenges and reverse any positive gains and with Africa’s citizens already expressing increasing dissatisfaction with governance delivery in their countries.

The new Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) has undergone an in depth-review in 2018-2020. The new updated conceptual framework reflects the evolved governance landscape and is based on strengthened indicators, thanks to better data availability on key African governance dimensions.

The 2020 IIAG results show that governance in Africa has improved over the last decade (2010-2019), with more than 60% of Africa’s population in 2019 living in a country where governance has improved since 2010. However, progress has slowed down over the last five years. Concerningly, the 2019 African average score for Overall Governance even registers a decline for the first time since 2010, while between 2010 and 2018 it had either improved or remained constant year on year.

The 2020 IIAG provides a picture of the continent until the end of 2019, just before it was hit by COVID-19. In terms of rights, civil society space and participation, the continent had long before embarked on a deteriorating path and the pandemic simply aggravated this existing negative trajectory.

Conversely, economic opportunity was set on a positive course of sustained progress, and the impact of COVID-19 is now threatening the hard-won achievement in this area.

Governance performance is not meeting Africa’s citizens’ growing expectations. Public Perception of Overall Governance has deteriorated over the last ten years, at twice as quick a pace since 2015, and registers the lowest score of the past decade in 2019.

While more than half of the countries have improved their governance within the last decade, progress appears unbalanced: 20 countries improved in Human Development and Foundations for Economic Opportunity, which are the main drivers of Overall Governance progress. But at the same time their performance in Security & Rule of Law and Participation

Rights and inclusion declined

Only eight countries have managed to improve in all four governance categories over the decade. This growing imbalance might threaten the sustainability of overall governance progress.