Zimbabwe Among Worst Governed Countries in Africa

Zimbabwe has been ranked as one of the worst-governed countries in Africa by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The organisation claimed that Zimbabwe was failing to advance political diversity, a free civil society, and free and fair elections.

Zimbabwe is ranked 29th out of 55 nations in the just published 2022 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), which measures how well each nation is run. The only country in the SADC region ranked lower than Zimbabwe is the Kingdom of Eswatini, which is ranked 35.

Botswana sits at number five, South Africa at number six, Zambia 24 and Mozambique sits at number 26. Zimbabwe scored badly on political and civil liberties where it was given the following scores:

• 12.5% on freedom of association,
• 26.9% on political pluralism,
• 14.1% on civil society space and
• 31.3% on democratic elections.

On a positive note, Zimbabwe scored 100% in terms of laws that protect women from violence.

The 2022 IIAG showed that governance in Africa has stagnated since 2019 due to democratic backsliding, climate change, insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation said the stagnation posed a serious threat to the continent’s decades of progress.

The research comes barely a month after the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute released another report showing a shrinking democratic space in the post-Robert Mugabe era.