The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s 2024 Index has ranked The Gambia among 10 African countries with most improvement in good governance. This represents a significant improvement since the previous index, reflecting advancements in governance categories such as human development and foundations for economic opportunity.
It said despite challenges like declining security and democratic participation, Gambia’s progress stands out amid broader continental trends of stagnation and deterioration in governance across many countries.
The 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), the latest iteration of the biennial dataset assessing governance performance and trends was released yesterday.
The index indicates that 33 out of 54 African countries are not progressing in good governance.
The report covers 10 years – 2014-2023—and was collected from 49 independent sources, with some data commissioned by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The IIAG is based on 322 variables clustered in 96 indicators, organised under 16 sub-categories and four main categories: Security & Rule of Law; Participation, Rights & Inclusion; Foundations for Economic Opportunity; and Human Development.
The 2024 IIAG shows that after four years of almost complete stagnation, Africa’s overall governance progress ground to a halt in 2022 as rising conflict and insecurity, as well as a shrinking democratic space across the continent, undermine critical progress achieved in human and economic development. Over the decade 2014-2023, there is progress for just over half (52.1%) of Africa’s population, living in 33 out of 54 countries, but for the remaining half, the overall governance level reached in 2023 is worse than in 2014.
However, this concerning picture at the continental average level masks dynamic and diverse performances and trajectories across the 54 African countries and between the 16 IIAG sub-categories.
At the country level, 13 countries – including Egypt, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Somalia – have followed a successful overall governance progress over the decade, even accelerating improvement since 2019. The latter four also rank in the top 10 most improved countries between 2014 and 2023, along with Seychelles, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Mauritania and Djibouti.
