Progress on governance in Africa has ground to a halt as security and political rights deteriorate in many countries, according to the latest report by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation published Wednesday.
“It’s not pretty,” Ibrahim told AFP ahead of the release of the report.
“Africa made great progress in the early decades of this century, but in the last 10 years we see that there has been very slow progress … and in the last five years things have started to stagnate and even deteriorate in some circumstances.”
Ibrahim, 78, is a Sudanese-British billionaire who made a fortune in telecoms and ploughed it into monitoring and encouraging better governance across Africa.
His foundation’s twice-a-year report, published since 2007, is considered the most comprehensive overview of the topic, crunching data for 322 variables including public services, justice, corruption and security.
The latest found some progress in overall governance in 33 countries, home to just over half of Africa’s 1.5 billion people, over the past 10 years.
But for the remaining 21 countries, “the situation is worse in 2023 than in 2014”, with many showing signs of sharp decline.
A steep improvement in Seychelles has seen it take over top spot in the foundation’s overall ranking from another Indian Ocean island nation, Mauritius.
Several areas have seen widespread improvements in Africa, including infrastructure, women’s equality, health and education, albeit from low bases.
But much of this is being undermined by falling scores for the rule of law, rights, political participation and, especially, security.
“The lack of safety affects everything who will build businesses or schools in a conflict zone?” said Ibrahim.
Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia are among the countries to experience devastating conflicts in the past decade, while a spate of military coups across western and central Africa since 2021 have underlined the fragility of political progress.
Ibrahim says pandemic lockdowns and the global trend towards “strong-man politics” may have emboldened autocrats.
But his biggest concern is the “financial strait-jacket” in which African countries are stuck thanks to heavy debt burdens and the high premiums that African countries must pay to access cash from global lenders.
“It’s circular,” he said. “When you don’t have enough money to build infrastructure, to deal with health or education, you start to lose control and that affects security.
“We need to cut this vicious circle to enable people to invest in the future.”
Ibrahim knows first-hand how hard it is to invest in Africa banks refused to lend to him when he was setting up his African telecoms firm in the late 1990s.
Things have hardly improved Africa today receives just 3.3 percent of global foreign direct investment, according to another of his foundation’s reports.
Ibrahim points to the need for fundamental reform in global lending institutions, as well as better technical training for Africa’s vast youth population.
The report underlies the growing frustrations among people on the continent. Even where indicators are showing positive signs, public perceptions are gloomy.
The research team said this may point to continued gaps in data, with many of the worst-affected citizens not being captured in official statistics.
It could also reflect the phenomenon that people’s expectations and frustrations rise as public services improve.
For all the gloom, Ibrahim finds hope in Africa’s young generation.
“They are better informed, more entrepreneurial and they’ve had enough,” he said.
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