Ghana has been ranked among the 10 top performers on the Ibrahim Index on African Governance, the first comprehensive ranking of 48 sub-Saharan African countries.

Mauritius, Seychelles, Botswana, Cape Verde, South Africa, Gabon, Namibia, Senegal and Sao Tome and Principe, complete the list.

The Ibrahim Index is a tool to hold Governments in Africa to account and frame the debate about how their peoples are governed. Its approach is based on scientific measurement of the degree to which Governments deliver political goods to their citizens.

With this, Africans are setting benchmarks not only for the Continent but the rest of the world.

The summary of the rankings in the 2007 Index, contained in the November edition of African Business, showed that the top 10 also did well in 2002 and 2000 although their positions relative to each other shifted slightly year by year.

In 2002 and 2000, the Seychelles edged out Mauritius for the top slot, followed in both years by Botswana in the third place.

Most well-governed countries exhibited similar stability, for example Cape Verde, which occupied the fourth position in 2005, was in the same position in 2002 and a slightly lower, number six, in 2000.

Similarly, South Africa, which came sixth on the table in 2005, was at number six in 2002 and four in 2000.

Ghana has been at numbers eight and nine in all years, Namibia moved between the seventh position in 2005 and the fifth position in 2000 and 2002.

The Index again showed that a set of countries have consistently been governed poorly relative to the rest
of the Continent.

Those occupying the bottom five positions in 2005 are Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Sudan and Guinea-Bissau. These countries are followed in 2005 by Liberia, Angola, Central African Republic, Burundi
and Sierra Leone.

Several of these worst performing nations highlighted the long-running effects of conflict, suggesting the difficulties of rapidly improving political goods performance even with improved governmental institutions.

Guinea-Bissau was identified as having shown the largest decline in government performance as measured
by the Index between 2000 and 2005, its score decline
put at 9.4 points.

Safety and Security, Rule of Law, Sustainable Economic Opportunity, Human Development and
Participation and Human Rights, were the five key areas that were measured.


Source: GNA