The Index of African Governance is compiled and updated annually by a team of researchers at Harvard University and across Africa, under the leadership of Robert I. Rotberg and Rachel M. Gisselquist. The 2007 and 2008 editions of the Index were published as the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. In the first edition, published in 2007, Rotberg and Gisselquist set out the Index’s basic framework and theory of governance, building on earlier work by Rotberg. The Index and all of its data have been revised annually to reflect the latest research and best data currently available.

All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well. That is what citizens want from the nation-states in which they live. Thus, nation-states in the modern world are responsible for the delivery of essential political goods to their inhabitants. That is their purpose, and has been their central legitimate justification since at least the seventeenth century. These essential political goods can be summarized and gathered under five categories: Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Opportunity; and Human Development. Together, these five categories of political goods epitomize the performance of any government, at any level. No one, whether looking to her village, municipality, province, state, or nation willingly wants to be victimized by crime or to live in a society without laws, freedom, a chance to prosper, or access to decent schools, well-run hospitals, and carefully-maintained roads.

 

This 2009 Index of African Governance measures the degree to which each of these five categories of political goods is provided within Africa’s fifty-three (forty-eight in prior Indexes) countries.