Liberia is rising from ashes to set the way for rest of Africa

What do we really know about the state of governance across our continent? How accurate is the picture of Africa painted by the daily headlines and often brief reports on international news broadcasts?

The answers may surprise some people. For away from the focus on the divisions and problems in individual countries, there is steady progress according to a comprehensive and independent study launched this week by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Addis Ababa, the home of the African Union.

The second Ibrahim Index of African Governance has found standards of governance and the health of civil society are improving in almost two-thirds of sub-Saharan countries.

This is vitally important. Without moving towards sound, honest, effective and responsive government, Africa simply can’t make the most of its enormous potential.

Demand change

We need to encourage this progress whenever we can and give citizens the information to help demand change where it is too slow.

This is the precise aim of the Ibrahim Index. Now in its second year, it uses a whole range of data and independent sources to give a comprehensive picture of the standards of governance of each country and the impact this is having on the well-being of its citizens.

Each country is judged on five broad categories - safety and security; the rule of law, transparency and corruption; human development; participation and human rights; and sustainable economic opportunity.

Importantly, the Ibrahim Index is not a snapshot of current developments but an accurate analysis of trends.

So today’s Ibrahim Index uses authoritative data from 2006, enabling performance to be measured against the previous year.

This allows comparisons to be made now and in the future within individual countries and between them to produce a unique ranking system.

So what does the 2008 Ibrahim Index tell us? It found welcome progress towards better standards of governance in 31 of the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

It is particularly encouraging that substantial improvements were found in several post-conflict countries. Liberia is the fastest improver, climbing six places in the ranking.

The country recorded progress in several categories and showed the most improvement in participation and human rights, following successful elections.

No one can doubt that Liberia, like other post-conflict countries, has many challenges ahead of it. But it is a decisive answer to the pessimists which say the problems in some Africa countries are so many and serious that progress is simply not possible.

Human rights

It’s pleasing, too, that as the world prepares later this year to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the most marked progress has been in the area of human rights and political participation.

Whilst there is still a considerable distance to go, no less than 29 countries of the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa show improvement in this important area.