Writes Leo Odera Omolo.
Kenya’s performance on governance issues has been on the decline since 2005, a new report shows.
According to the Mo Ibrahim 2010 Index report, Kenya had declined from position 23 out of 53 countries in 2005 to position 27 in 2009.
The performance index, which is carried out after every five years, also shows Kenya performing poorly in the East African Community {EAC} with Tanzania and Uganda registering tremendous improvement.
He performance index focuses on areas of governance which have been divided on four categories, mainly safety and rule of law{personal safety, rule of law, accountability and corruption, national security},participation and human rights {participation, rights, gender}, sustainable economic opportunity {public management, private sector} and human development {health and welfare}.
According to the index, Tanzania has been ranked 15th in the EAC region followed by Uganda{24].Kenya {27},Rwanda{31} and Burundi ranked {32}.
The r5eport further shows Kenya dropping from its earlier ranking of position 23 in 2005 with its score dropping from 51 to five per cent, while Uganda rose from position 26 with its governance average increasing from 49 to 51.
While releasing the report on Monday, the director of index at the foundation, Hania Farhan, said Kenya’s performance has dropped significantly.
Asked why Kenya performed poorly, Farhan said he performance depend on quality ,tertiary education, teacher/pupil ratio and enrolment.
Reads the report;”Kenya scored 50 for governance quality in 2008/2009 and was ranked 27theout of 53 countries. However, Kenya scored higher than the regional average for East Africa which was 45.”
And the report also shows continued poor performance on insecurity, infrastructure, personal safety, corruption, facilitative business environment and the performance of the judiciary.
However, the report shows an improvement on gender issues which include gender quality, ratio of boys to girls in primary schools and women participation in the labor force and politics.
On access to health, the country was ranked 26th while on education it was the 30th in the continent.
The best Kenya rankings were in national security {83} per cent, gender {65],public management {63], environment and human rights [55] and health and welfare {54}.
On his part, the director for governance and public administration and member of the foundation said the report shows many African citizens are becoming healthier and have greater access to economic opportunities than it was in the last five years ago.
The report also shows other countries like Seychelles, Botswana, Cape Verde, Lesotho South Africa, Namibia, Ghana, Tunisia, Lesotho and Egypt being in the top.
Others such as Angola, Liberia and Togo, the report indicates, have also made significant improvement in governance performance.
On the other hand, Somalia was rated last due to the lawless state of the country followed by Chad and Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ends
leooderaomolo@yahoo.com