INFOGRAPHIC: The Best and Worst African Countries for Democracy
Almost half of the countries in Africa run ‘authoritarian regimes’ and experienced a significant democratic regression in 2019, according to a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published this week. With geopolitical issues, economic stagnation and corruption having characterised most countries in the region, the trend has led to an increase in frustration with the political status quo in the continent. From growing public protests to power tussles and regime changes, the region’s overall average score in the EIU’s 2019 Democracy Index suffered the lowest average score since 2010.
Techloy notes that 25 out of the 54 countries in Africa, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, Egypt, Cameroon and Sudan have a form of government considered to be ‘authoritarian’, according to the report. Also, the only African country believed to be running a full democracy was Mauritius with an overall democracy score of 8.22 out of 10 — ranked 18th in the world — ahead of France (20th), South Korea (23rd) and the United States, considered as a flawed democracy (25th)— South Africa (40th) and Nigeria (109th).
Norway leads the rest of the world for democracy with the highest score of 9.87, while its Northern Europe neighbours, Iceland with 9.58 and Sweden with 9.39 coming second and third respectively. North Korea came last with a score of 1.08, while two African countries — Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo complete the bottom three. The EIU research is based on criteria including the electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties, with countries rated on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 represents an authoritarian regime and 10 denotes a full democracy.
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