Methodology

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) is a composite index which gives a statistical measure of governance performance in 54 African countries. The 2020 IIAG dataset, which is its 13th iteration, spans a ten-year period (2010-2019).

Governance is defined by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation as the provision of the political, social, economic and environmental public goods and services that every citizen has the right to expect from their government, and that a government has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens.

The IIAG governance framework comprises four categories:

1. Security & Rule of Law
2. Participation, Rights & Inclusion
3. Foundations for Economic Opportunity, and
4. Human Development.

These categories are made up of 16 sub-categories, consisting of 79 indicators. Compiled by combining 237 variables from 40 independent African and global institutions, the 2020 IIAG is the most comprehensive collection of data on African governance.

A new IIAG dataset is released every two years. IIAG datasets are not comparable between themselves, as each iteration covers a different ten-year period, data are revised retrospectively, and revision of the theoretical framework takes place between iterations. Users of the Index should therefore always reference the most recent version of the IIAG dataset.

Citizens’ Voices

Citizens’ Voices is a new IIAG section dedicated to measure public opinion on governance issues. Citizens’ Voices mirrors the IIAG categories and provides public perception data on the closest proxies to the IIAG measures.

The Public Perception of Overall Governance score is the result of aggregating the underlying four sub-section scores: Public Perception of Security & Rule of Law, Public Perception of Participation, Rights & Inclusion, Public Perception of Economic Opportunity Foundations, and Public Perception of Human Development. Organised underneath the four sub-sections, there are 13 indicators that are formed by 35 variables from source.

All the raw data in the Citizens’ Voices section is sourced from Afrobarometer. Calculated as a separate index, Citizens’ Voices scores are not counted in the calculation of IIAG scores.

Calculation stages

1. Variables that are consistent with the Foundation’s definition of governance and meet specific standards of quality, periodicity and country coverage are selected and missing raw data values are estimated
2. Raw data come in different scales from source. In order to be compared and combined, data are transformed to a standardised (normalised) range of 0.0-100.0, where 100.0 is the best possible score.
3. Once the 237 variables have been transformed to a common scale, a simple method of aggregation is applied to calculate the scores. The successive unweighted averages are carried out following the IIAG framework structure. The Overall Governance score is the average of the underlying category scores; the category scores are the average of their underlying sub-categories; and the sub-categories are the average of their constituent indicators. The majority of indicators contain sub-indicators, some of which have underlying variables (sub-sub-indicators).

A similar methodology is applied to calculate the Citizens’ Voices section scores.

Note on decimal place precision in the 2020 IIAG

All figures on IIAG outputs are displayed to one decimal place. The calculation method to arrive at these scores is as follows:

• Country scores are calculated on full-precision raw data values (using the exact values as they are collected from source). All scores are then rounded to one decimal place.
• Group averages are calculated on the rounded, one decimal place country scores.
• Both change over time (trends) and ranks are calculated on the scores to one decimal place. When two countries have the same score to one decimal place, they have tied ranks.

The exception to this are the annual average trend figures. These are calculated on the rounded trends over time and displayed to two decimal places. Trend classifications are assigned based on the full precision of the annual average trends over the ten years (2010-2019) and five years (2015-2019).

If you would like to view the methodologies of commissioned datasets and data projects the Foundation contributes to (to increase the availability of governance data on Africa), they can be found here:

If you would like to view how data from Afrobarometer was coded for inclusion in the 2020 IIAG, please see the following document:

IIAG data sources

The 2020 IIAG consists of 79 indicators that are formed by 237 variables, from 40 independent, external data sources.

Citizens’ Voices data sources

The Citizens’ Voices section consists of 13 indicators that are formed by 35 variables. All of them come from one same data source: