Washington, D.C. — Governance has significantly improved in a number of African countries, according to a report released today by the World Bank.
The report, “Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance and Indicators, 1996-2006”, found that some African countries have made strides toward cutting corruption and improving governance, but many still face tremendous challenges.
“The hopeful news is that a considerable number of countries, including in Africa, are showing that it is possible to make significant governance progress in a relatively short period of time,” Daniel Kaufmann, a co-author of the report, said. “Such improvements in governance are critical for aid effectiveness and for sustained long-run growth.”
The report measures governance in 212 countries and territories using a comprehensive set of indicators developed over the past decade. The report measures six components of good governance.
Kenya, Niger and Sierra Leone have improved their voice and accountability component, which measures citizen participation in government and press freedom, and Algeria and Liberia have strengthened the rule of law, according to the report.
The report also found that Algeria, Angola, Libya, Rwanda and Sierra Leone are more politically stable. Tanzania was one of only two countries worldwide where progress in combating corruption was judged to be significant.
In some African countries, however, the quality of governance has deteriorated. The World Bank report highlights Cote d'Ivoire and Zimbabwe as two countries that have performed poorly.
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The report found that improving governance is important to development and to fighting poverty. Dealing with global trends, Kaufman said that bribery around the world was estimated to total about U.S. $1 trillion dollars. "The burden of corruption," he added, "falls disproportionately on the bottom billion people living in extreme poverty.”
The report concluded that governance throughout the world has not improved much over the past 10 years.
The World Bank has defended the importance of governance indicators to its work despite criticism that governance cannot be measured. John Githongo, a former Secretary for Governance and Ethics in Kenya’s Office of the President said in a World Bank press release announcing the report's release that “the governance indicators put to rest the tired assumption that these issues cannot be robustly measured and the lessons drawn cannot be put to subsequent positive use by governments, the development community, civil society, and the media.”
