A Yardstick for the Best and Worst of Africa

Now that the New Partnership for Africa's Development has reneged on its original plan to subject the character and quality of national governance in Africa to peer review, the need for a method to improve the way the continent governs itself is more urgent than ever.

Many African nations, and others elsewhere in the developing world, are poorly governed. It is a recipe for lagging behind the rest of the world in economic growth, in medical and educational attainments, in social and political betterment and in freedom from internal conflict. If governance could be improved, in Africa and elsewhere, infant mortality rates would fall, the struggle to contain the Aids epidemic might be winnable and civil wars would prove less deadly.

Well-governed states perform for their citizens. They deliver high levels of security, frame a strong rule of law, respect political freedoms and human rights, nurture strong institutions, provide quality educational and health services, strengthen or regulate effective infrastructure, bolster an economic framework conducive to growth and prosperity, offer an atmosphere in which civil society can flourish, and regulate the environmental commons for the benefit of all.

Botswana has since independence in1966 delivered such public goods consistently and with great impact on the lives, attainments and prosperity of its people. Diminished governments such as those of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola or Sierra Leone over time have preyed on their own citizens and delivered few, if any, public goods. Their arteries of commerce, educational and medical systems, and security operations are sclerotic. Rule of law is honoured in the breach. Political institutions are rudimentary.

Zimbabwe is a once well-governed state that, thanks to President Robert Mugabe's ruthless greed for power and wealth, now teeters on the brink of failure. Rule of law is gone, political institutions are much weakened, the economy is in free fall and only ruling party thugs are secure. The best-governed and worst-governed states of Africa stand out. But how do the others rank? How do they compare with south-east Asian or Latin American nations?

Now that Nepad has changed course, we need a valid method of designating the positive achievers and contrasting them with those needing improvement. Creating a new rating method for African and other developing world nations should spur the least well-governed countries and their rulers to strive to improve, if only in order to attract foreign investment and donor support. Indeed, the road to better governance begins with a public recognition of comparative governmental quality among developing nations.

What is needed is a method of anointing those countries and leaders that are providing well, and shaming those who, for a variety of reasons, perform less effectively than their peers. Groups of experts could offer a subjective, impressionistic formula for rating such nation states on the qualities of their governance. But we need a method that is much more rigorous, and so thoroughly objective as to be free of bias.

Objectivity can be enhanced and rankings made less prone to impression (and thus criticism) if the essence of good governance is quantified. Among the dozen or so plausible indicators, for example, are: infrastructural growth (relatively easy to reduce to numbers), security (harder), political freedoms and human rights (also difficult) and adherence to the rule of law (much tougher). The delivery of economic betterment and prosperity can be approximated relatively easily through using familiar proxies such as per-capita gross domestic product.

Measuring educational and health changes is relatively straightforward, using percentages of school age children in school, infant mortality trends and so on. Concern for the environment or hostility to civil society is more difficult to measure, but not impossible. The precise proxies, and choosing the ones that will measure good governance best, should be subject to extensive debate. But an array of proxies can surely be found to do the job, permit governments to be ranked numerically and with some transparency, and thus enable international agencies and critics, donors and concerned observers to praise the best in Africa and elsewhere, and criticise those falling behind. Citizens can thus act, too, in their own interest.

A good governance ranking system could make a difference in the developing world. At the very least, it would focus attention on a critical problem bedeviling many struggling nations.