Nigeria and half of the countries in Africa posted relatively weak performance in their policy environment, supporting development and poverty reduction, the World Bank has said.
According to the bank’s yearly Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) for sub-Saharan Africa, out of 38 countries, seven showed improvements while another 12 saw a decline in their performance, including Nigeria.
The CPIA rates the performance and challenges of poor countries to determine the allocation of low to zero-interest financing and grants for countries that are eligible for support from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA).
CPIA scores assess the quality of countries’policy and institutional progress using 16 development indicators in areas, such as economic management, structural policies, policies for social inclusion, equity, public sector management and institutions.
With policy reforms, Rwanda continues to lead all countries with a CPIA score of 4.0 followed by Cape Verde, Kenya, and Senegal, all with a 3.8 score. Improvements in several policy areas reversed the slide in Ghana’s score, lifting the country’s CPIA score from 3.4 in 2014 to 3.6 in 2015 with Nigeria in the lower rung.
The bank in a statement explained that countries transiting out of violence saw modest improvements. Côte d’Ivoire with an aggregate of 3.3, that has enjoyed four consecutive years of wide-ranging reforms and improvements in CPIA scores, saw stronger performance in equity of public resource last year, but this did not translate into an improvement in the country’s aggregate CPIA score.
By contrast, both Burundi (3.1) and The Gambia (2.9) saw the CPIA score drop from last year’s rating, underscoring that conflict and weak governance can set back policy gains and development progress.
Commenting on the report, World Bank Chief Economist for Africa, Albert Zeufack said: “Although there are a number of highly performing countries, African IDA-eligible countries on average continue to lag behind those in other regions in their policy and institutional ratings.”
He said urgent action is needed as more countries are facing downward pressure on the current account and fiscal balances, declining reserve positions, depreciating currencies, higher inflation, and rising debt burdens.
The statement further stated that the number of African countries that declined in CPIA last year doubled the number that improved, regretting that sub-Saharan Africa’s fragile countries continued to lag behind.
He regretted that only seven countries such as Ghana, Comoros, Chad, Guinea, Madagascar, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Citing Nigeria, the report indicated that overall, the low governance scores for African countries indicated that public institutions need to be strengthened so they can be more accountable for delivering human development services, security, and justice to citizens.
Lead Economist, World Bank Africa Region, PunamChuhan-Pole said though some African countries are currently going through difficult situation, he argued the situation also presents opportunities to accelerate key reforms to boost competitiveness and diversification which are critical for raising growth prospects and ending extreme poverty. He encouraged the diversification of the economy of sub Saharan countries against the prevalent mono product economy even for the otherwise large countries.
