The Mo Ibrahim Foundation (MIF) yesterday launched its Index of African Governance (IIAG) Series 2023 Report titled, “The Power of Data for Governance: Closing data gaps to accelerate Africa’s transformation,” in Accra.
The 2023 Ibrahim IIAG report highlights the strong correlation between high-quality data and effective governance.
In 14 African countries, the latest population census was conducted before 2010 while only three African countries have a death registration system that registers at least 90% of the deaths occurred.
SDG-1 calls for the eradication of extreme poverty by 2030, but just five African countries have data for the 2019-2022 period on the proportion of the population living below the international poverty line.
Sound data is at the heart of Africa’s governance and development agendas, and the report underscores its role in driving progress, assessing government performance, setting policy priorities, and ensuring trust in governments.
Drawing from the 2022 IIAG dataset, the report reveals a strong positive correlation between access to high-quality statistics and effective governance across African countries from 2012 to 2021.
However, Africa remains the continent most impacted by data gaps globally, with the region possessing the lowest availability of civil registration and vital statistics.
When it comes to the basic building blocks of statistics that are key to defining public policies, such as population censuses and birth and death registration, many African countries are missing crucial data.
Even in areas where strides have been made, critical governance data gaps persist on issues including health structures, the informal economy, the environment, violence against women, child labour, and illicit financial flows.
The underfunding of data remains a serious challenge globally, with statistics receiving just 0.34% of total Official Development Assistance (ODA).
In Africa, ODA received for data and statistics has nearly halved between 2018 and 2021.
In addition to investing in data, the report outlines critical strategies to enhance data impact and accelerate development progress on the continent.
These include the importance of ensuring the independence of National Statistical Offices, harnessing alternative data sources like citizen-generated data and private company data, and leveraging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
Mo Ibrahim, Founder and Chair of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, emphasized the importance of data for Africa in achieving key development and policy agendas: “Without data, we are driving blind – policies are misdirected and progress on the road to development is stunted. We must act urgently to close the data gap in Africa if we genuinely want to leave no one behind. Data is key to achieving both the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the UN’ Sustainable Development Goals. I have long been thinking that what UN Agenda 2030 should have begun with is an SDG 0 – Sound Data for Governance.”
The report was launched in Accra, Ghana, at an event co-hosted with Afrobarometer.
From its inception, MIF has been a strong supporter of Afrobarometer, which is now the leading African research institution conducting public attitude surveys on the continent.
Afrobarometer is the only source of the Citizens’ Voices dataset, which complements the IIAG dataset.
The launch followed a two-day meeting of the IIAG Expert Panel in Accra.
The renewed advisory body meets once a year in a different African country for in-person consultations on the IIAG.
Established in 2006, MIF is dedicated to strengthening the African voice on global challenges.
The Foundation provides data and analysis to assess continental challenges, convenes stakeholders for discussions, and supports initiatives to enhance leadership and governance in Africa.
The Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), published by MIF since 2007, is the most comprehensive publicly available dataset measuring governance performance across African countries.
Every two years the IIAG provides comparable data on the whole spectrum of African governance – from security and safety, to rule of law, transparency, rights, participation, economic opportunities, education, health and environment in 54 African countries over a period of ten years.
Its next iteration, the 2024 IIAG, will be released in the second half of 2024, covering the 10-year period 2014-2023.
