The African Leaders Index

The African Leadership Index is composed of very specific evaluation criterion for the leader of each African state. The Index gives a freedom rating as well as a grade letter based on corruption levels, quality of life statistics, and yearly analysis of failures and successes of the leader. It is very interesting to note that the African Leadership Index does not focus too much on the legislative and economic spheres of each country, but rather the leader and the leader’s failures and successes displayed through policies and major events. Though economic and political highlights are expressed, the main focus of each country is how the states of these spheres have been positively and negatively shaped by each leader.

It was certainly most interesting to read the profiles of the African presidents of Cameroon, the Sudan, Chad, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, Eritrea and Zimbabwe, who all received worse than an “F” letter score, and were essentially banned to the “morgue.”  This condemnation of death with no hope of restoration is an interesting concept of African social spheres; it’s true there are so many intertwining factors, but can we so quickly condemn these nations to be beyond all repair?

It was quite clear that the presidents awarded the highest scores participated in free (or mostly free) elections, did not violently oppose counter parties, maintained relative freedom of the press, and were overall positively consistent in their leadership.

I found the brief profile on Sudan and President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir to be very intriguing, given that President Bashir very recently accepted South Sudan’s referendum for independence. This event is very momentous in the international political sphere, as it is not often that secessionist movements are granted their wishes. It is disheartening to discover that though agreements and compromise have been reached, violence over resources continues as if the issue was never addressed.

--Chelsea O'Neill