The 2011 Mo Ibrahim Governance Index

The 2011 Ibrahim Index of African Governance was released recently by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The top five countries on the index in descending order are Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, Seychelles, and South Africa, while the last five countries on the index in descending order are Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Chad, and Somalia.

The index is based on four main indicators:

• Human Development: This indicator deals with the following areas – welfare; education; and health. According to the 2011 index, while there has been a general improvement in this indicator through increased investments, there is a greater need to focus on the youth population especially in areas of education and healthcare. It was also observed that regardless of the increased investment, inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the way investments are made still prevails
• Stable Economic Opportunity: This indicator deals with the following areas – public management; business environment; infrastructure; and rural sector. Across the continent, majority of the countries improved in this indicator.
• Participation and Human Rights: This indicator deals with the following areas - participation; rights; and gender
• Safety and Rule of Law: This indicator deals with the following areas – national security; personal safety; accountability; and state of law

Some of the highlights in the report include:

• Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone is the second country that demonstrates statistically significant improvement in overall governance quality over the past five years. The country also gained in all the four indicators
• Liberia: Liberia is one of the two countries to show statistically significant improvement in overall governance quality over the past five years. This has been achieved through improvements in all four categories of the Index and 13 out of 14 sub-categories.
• Libya: Libya was one of the countries that showed a disconnect between performance in the various categories/indicators. Libya is ranked in the bottom half of the Index in 2010. Libya shows imbalance in performance between Human Development and Participation and Human Rights. In Libya’s case the imbalance is extreme with the country ranking in the top ten for Human Development and in the bottom three for Participation and Human Rights. Libya’s performances in Safety and Rule of Law and Sustainable Economic Opportunity are also weak in relation to Human Development.

Africa needs more access to data, in order to benchmark its progress and performance, more importantly as it’s a developmental state, the usefulness and acclaim of this index amidst its weakness in data attests to this fact. There is need to applaud the work of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which has dedicated its work to the progress of governance in this country, it is with this we look forward to a continent with increased access to information and data, as well as good governance.

Good luck to the Democratic Republic of Congo, as they prepare towards their election (The country ranked 50^th out of 53 countries), we hope the elections are peaceful.

You can assess the Index by using the following link

The promising frontier of banking in sub-Saharan Africa

The Economic Intelligence Unit recently released a report titled Banking in sub-Saharan Africa to 2020: A promising frontier. There have been lots of reports that have suggested the positive growth trajectory in the continent, looking at the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, as they indicate the outputs. However, lots have ignored the mechanisms that are needed to ‘oil the prospective machine’. Thus, this report comes at no better time, anchored with helpful data to come to grips with how effective the banking sector will be to help manage the growth expected on the continent.

The report looks at two scenarios: a scenario that is driven exclusively by economic expansion, while the other scenario looks into economic growth and financial deepening. With the former scenario, it is projected that 16 key African countries will boost its financial assets by 178% to US$980bn by 2020, while with the latter scenario, which is seen as the more likely scenario will be driven by both economic growth and financial deepening, we foresee assets expanding by 248% to US$1.37trn.

Some key findings from the report include:

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• The expected boom is largely dependent on the expected high economic growth as well as the application of innovation in communications and the financial sector.
• The growth of continent’s banking sector is not expected to be uniform across countries. It is expected that the current poorly served countries will experience the strongest growth as they greatly tap into the new resource boom. Some of these countries include Angola, Uganda and Tanzania.
• South Africa which currently has the largest banking sector in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to stay the same come 2020. However the country’s financial sector is expected to experience the slowest growth trajectory. Other countries that might experience this include Botswana and Namibia
• A current trend in policy decisions, which have been deemed positive, by several experts are expected to support the growth in the sector. An example of these trends include a new wave of issuance of benchmark-setting sovereign bonds  as well as the construction of national and regional markets for stocks and bonds.

Rupiah Banda, former Zambian president's healthcare legacy.

Rupiah Banda made health care a major focus of his government’s plan. During his reign around 12% of the country’s budget was devoted to the Ministry of Health as a way to increase the access to health care in the country. Also, the government has delivered anti-retroviral drugs to 89% of the country’s AIDS population as well as worked to reduce the number of malaria-related deaths by 66%.

With 60% of the country population living in rural areas, where there was a low access to healthcare service there was a need for an innovate solution. The former president invested Zk3300bn (USD53m)on a project to develop mobile hospitals across various districts. The former president argued that the mobile hospitals will reach about 3 out of 4 Zambians. Each mobile hospital is made up of 6 truck and trailer units all of which are equipped with X-ray machines, laboratories, surgical theatre and are manned by 40 medically trained staff.. The mobile units all have independent power and water supplies, and the staff are provided with sleeping accommodation as well as canteens all on site. The trucks are fully equipped with high frequency communication radios, which will provide an opportunity for real time communication between health care specialists across the country. With all these, the mobile hospitals are expected to treat everything from small ailments to serious diseases and accidents.

 

According to a government report, between the launch in April 2011 and September 2011 more than 50, 000 Zambians have been treated through the mobile hospitals. Also, as at September 2011 twelve new district hospitals have been commissioned as well as 3,600 medical doctors recruited. If everything goes according to plan by 2016, new hospitals will be built in all districts in the country.

Indeed a legacy

The project has had its fair share of criticism, some of which include the suspicion that the project was used tosecure votes, as well as the source of funding  - the current mobile hospitals were acquired from a Chinese trade company with assistance from a Chinese bank.

Now that Rupiah Banda lost the recent electionto the opposition party, who were critical of the project, it is our hope that this project will continue, and continue to produce its hoped outcomes.