Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Africa and the Human Freedom Index 2018

The Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute, and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom have just published "The Human Freedom Index 2018: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom" by Ian Vasquez and Tanja Porcnik.

It evaluated 162 countries for 2016, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available. It looked at 79 indicators of personal and economic freedom in the following areas: rule of law, security, safety, movement, religion, association, assembly, civil society, expression, information, identity, relationships, size of government, legal systems, property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, and regulation of credit, labor, and business.

Of the 47 African countries evaluated, the ten best performing were: Mauritius (37), Cape Verde (53), Seychelles (54), Ghana (57), South Africa (63), Botswana (64), Rwanda (71), Namibia (74), Kenya (82), and Uganda (85). The five worst performing African countries were: Libya (158), Sudan (157), Egypt (156), Algeria (155) and Burundi (154).