NAMIBIA has been named the top emerging market economy in Africa and the 13th best one in the world by global business and financial news provider, Bloomberg.

Only four African countries made the Top 20 Emerging Markets list in the March issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, and Namibia was rated ahead of Morocco (19th), South Africa (15th) and Zambia (14th).

Bloomberg awarded countries points based on their relative performance in each of more than a dozen areas.

"The areas we looked at included IMF [International Monetary Fund] forecasts for 2013 to 2017 for GDP [gross domestic product] growth, inflation, government debt and total investment. We also measured demographic and economic development data using current figures from the World Bank and the International Energy Agency on literacy rate, age of population, labour participation and electricity consumption," Bloomberg said on its website.

"The worst-performing country received zero points, while the best-performing country received the maximum number of points assigned to that category. Scores for all variables were summed, with a range for the final score being 0 to 100."

Namibia received a total score of 44,4, compared to 43 points for Zambia and 42,9 for South Africa. Philippines, with an overall score of 38,1, was ranked 20th, while China, with 77,5 points, came out tops.

Namibia also fared better than Hungary, Brazil and Mexico. Other countries included in the list are Poland, Colombia, Indonesia, Russia, Chile, turkey, Malaysia, Czech Republic, Peru, Thailand and South Korea.

Bloomberg took into account its data on the price-earnings ratio of countries' equity market, liquidity and currency volatility. It also included each country's position in three outside rankings: the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom.