The African island nation of Mauritius ranked first out of 53 African countries

With the island nation of Mauritius ranking first out of 53 African countries, Southern Africa has been deemed the continent’s best-governed and Central Africa its worst-governed region, according to a new ranking of Africa’s quality of governance published today, says All Africa.

If you are an African who ranks health, education and freedom from poverty as your top priority, you are best off in the Seychelles, and worst off in the Central African Republic.

But if you value human rights and participation in government highest, you are best off in Mauritius. You’re worst off in Somalia, but Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya and Sudan are not much better.

These are among a host of findings revealed in the 2009 Ibrahim Index of Governance, which was launched at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town on Monday. The index is named after Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born cellphone entrepreneur who has launched the foundation of the same name to improve the quality of leadership in Africa.

This year’s index differs from the first two – published in 2007 and 2008 – by including North Africa for the first time, boosting the number of countries surveyed from 48 to 53. One North African country enters the ranks of the 10 best-governed in the continent: Tunisia, which comes in at 8th place. Eqypt is ranked 11 of 53, Algeria 14, Morocco 16 and Libya 23.

Overall, this year’s index shows that “about 26 or 27 countries have improved in general,” Mo Ibrahim told AllAfrica in an interview a week ahead of the publication of the findings.

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