Ibrahim report finds SA’s governance has not improved much since 2014:
South Africa ranked fourth in 2023 for overall governance on the African continent, with Seychelles being the best-performing and most improved country, according to the 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) report.
The index, released on Wednesday, contains the latest iteration of the biennial dataset assessing governance performance and trends in the 54 African countries from 2014 to 2023.
Collected from 49 independent sources, with some data commissioned by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the report is based on 322 variables clustered in 96 indicators that were organised under 16 sub-categories and four main categories: security and rule of law; participation, rights and inclusion; foundations for economic opportunity; and human development.
For 13 countries — Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, Somalia, Togo, and Zambia — which have about 20.5% of the continent’s population, there had been progress over the decade, with the pace accelerating since 2019.
But for 11 countries — Botswana, Burkina Faso, eSwatini, Guinea, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Tunisia and Uganda — home to almost 29.3% of the population, there has been deterioration in governance since 2014.
The report cautioned that the pace of governance had worsened over the second part of the decade.
Regarding South Africa’s governance structures since 2014, the report found a trend of slowing deterioration since 2014.
“At the overall governance level, South Africa ranks fourth in 2023, scoring slightly lower than in 2014, following a trend of slowing deterioration since 2014,” reads the report without stating the reasons behind the deterioration.
South Africa ranked 10th for infrastructure in 2023, but registered the biggest decline of the whole continent in this subcategory, losing -2.1 points since 2014.
Despite considerable improvements in the indicators of internet and computers, mobile communications and access to energy, public perception of infrastructure has dropped at a much faster rate of -34.9.
South Africa and The Gambia are the only two countries that have a decline in infrastructure development.
But South Africa and Mauritius remain the two top-performing countries in the business and labour environment in Africa, with Rwanda slowly catching up. In all three countries, economic diversification and business and competition regulation are among
the highest performing indicators, scoring 73.4 and 94.5 respectively.
Regarding anti-corruption, Angola improved by +17.9 while other higher-scoring countries registered large declines: Botswana (-15.8), South Africa (-11.2) and Mauritius (-5.0).
The index reports recent improvements in health and education outcomes, which it said “reflect increased investment in these sectors across Africa”.
Countries such as Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Cabo Verde, and Lesotho have each allocated more than 10% of their GDP to health and education.
“This level of commitment is essential for progress, yet significant challenges persist, particularly in bridging the financing gap,” said the report.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation estimates, in 2021, the total spending on education in Africa rose by 2%, primarily driven by government contributions, which account for 69% of the total.
But governments in Africa spent an average of 3.7% of GDP on education — still below the recommended 4%.
The 10 highest-scoring countries follow diverging courses, with Morocco being the only country managing to accelerate improvement over the decade, while Mauritius, Botswana and Tunisia are on a concerning trend of worsening deterioration.
“The 2024 IIAG is a sobering reminder of the threat that a deepening security crisis and shrinking participatory environment poses to the continent’s progress,” said founder and chair of the foundation, Mo Ibrahim.
He emphasised that the three most deteriorated indicators from 2014 to 2023 relate to public perceptions — of economic opportunities, security and safety, and social protection and lived poverty.
The index noted that weak data has hindered the measurements in key sub-categories such as education and rural economy.
The report cautioned that key governance data gaps remain regarding the informal economy, health structures and capacities, child labour, illicit financial flows, the prevalence of discrimination and hate crimes, disability and recycling and waste management.
Eskom withdraws from Cape Town informal settlement after second attack:
Families in Endlovini informal settlement in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, will have to wait to have their electricity faults repaired after Eskom withdrew its services from the area.
Eskom made the announcement on Monday after the security vehicle accompanying the power utility’s workers into the area was hijacked. The workers were there to fix a number of electricity issues.
Eskom said the recent hijacking had left them with no choice but to halt all services in Endlovini for the safety of their staff and contractors. Eskom said it was the second incident in two weeks where their teams were targeted.
On 9 June Eskom also halted operations in Endlovini after its employees, who were repairing an electricity fault, were held at gunpoint. They managed to escape unharmed but their vehicle sustained damage from a gunshot.
Endlovini ward councillor Lonwaba Mqina said Eskom had a backlog of issues to resolve in the area, and it was unfortunate that these will be temporarily unresolved.
Mqina said a City of Cape Town vehicle had also been hijacked in the settlement earlier this year.
Endlovini is one of the oldest informal settlements in Khayelitsha and continues to grow each day. However the area is rife with crime, yet still does not have street lights.
Mqina said some households have been waiting for almost a year for Eskom to fix their electricity faults.
He said improved lighting and more police patrols could help.
“In 2022 four people were killed in the informal settlement and we raised the issue of not having high-mast lights and access roads. Promises were made but nothing had happened. This informal settlement is huge and there are parts of it that do not have electricity at all, like Nkandla, with 7,000 shacks,” said Mqina.
Eskom said it is working closely with law enforcement to address the incidents and ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.
Provincial police spokesperson Wesley Twigg said SAPS did not yet have a record of the incident.
This article was first published by GroundUp.
Urban decay and infrastructure projects to be fast-tracked, says Macpherson:
South Africa is facing an “infrastructure crisis” and his department is working to fast-track projects, tackle urban decay and hundreds of derelict and hijacked buildings across the country, Minister of Public Works Dean Macpherson said this week.
He was speaking at a media briefing on a new partnership between his department, the KwaZulu-Natal public works department, the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa (Fedhasa) and eThekwini metro, to boost tourism in the city.
Macpherson said it was generally accepted that the metro “is not where it should be”, which is why the Presidential Working Group has been set up with local businesses and city officials to confront problems that range from urban decay and crime to inadequate water, sanitation and road infrastructure.
“Infrastructure is not just a problem in this city, it’s a problem across the country. We are in an infrastructure crisis in the country. We are not spending publicly the amount of money that we should, and it is now catching up with us,” he said.
He said his department last week launched a project preparation financing bid window to provide municipalities, government departments and other entities with support for projects valued at more than R1 billion to expand infrastructure investment and accelerate economic growth and job creation.
“Tourism is a big contributor to job creation in our country and can absorb people into the formal economy, and so getting tourism right is crucial … a decline in tourism numbers has been seen [in eThekwini] and bookings are down year on year. There are several factors that contribute to that, obviously the one being around the state of beaches.”
Macpherson said 95% of beaches are open in eThekwini. “We want to make that message very, very clear that eThekwini is open. The beaches are safe, the water is safe.”
After a meeting with tourism authorities, Macpherson said his department was considering making the technical expertise of its built environment agency, Infrastructure South Africa, available to support municipalities.
“We also contemplated Blue Flag status. Between national, provincial government and local government, we’ve got to look at how we get that programme back on board, and what can we do as a department to contribute towards fixing problems that are more upstream in the courses of water, so that we can get an internationally recognised system back in place that tourists have confidence in.”
He said it was important to create awareness among people living upstream about how their behaviour affects the quality of the province’s rivers and beaches.
Hijacked buildings
Turning to problem buildings, he said that the government owns 388 buildings nationally that have been hijacked or illegally occupied and his department would work with the local government to “rectify” this.
“[W]herever you have an occupied building, whether it be in a city centre or a suburb, that contributes to urban decay and crime,” he said.
The department had recently “taken back” and secured the dilapidated Excelsior Court in Berea in Durban after it had been stripped — even of its lifts — and illegally occupied for more than a decade. Similarly, his department recently won a court order to evict homeless people living outside the Cape of Good Hope Castle, a major tourist attraction.
Macpherson said tourism operators in Ray Nkonyeni municipality on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast had highlighted difficulties in obtaining leases of government-owned property.
“There are 47 properties that we own down there on Admiralty land [a strip of land inland of the high-water mark] where the municipality owns the structures, and we own the land, and there are leases up for renewal,” he said.
Macpherson said tourism authorities had alleged that operators had been instructed to hand over 30% of their businesses to third parties to secure a lease renewal.
“It sounds like extortion, that’s what it is, that makes me hugely concerned. I’m not going to allow land that is owned by the state to be used to advance nefarious agendas,” Macpherson said.
“I want to make sure that businesses that have been trading there for a long time that employ 300 people are able to have certainty of tenure, that they’re able to build and invest in their businesses, and that we don’t allow these things to be used for political manoeuvres.”
Fedhasa national chairperson Rosemary Anderson said the industry wanted to be part of working on the issue of derelict, state-owned buildings “whereby we could look at repurposing them with our corporate members” and host NGOs in the buildings through corporate social responsibility programmes.
She said the province had not yet recovered to pre-Covid-19 levels of foreign tourist arrivals, but the department of home affairs’ project to fast-track visa applications for Indian and Chinese tourists and the implementation of a digital visa application process would help to boost arrivals.
Fedhasa KwaZulu-Natal chairperson Brett Tungay said forward bookings for December were “looking quite good”.
He said he believed that within the next 12 months there will be “huge changes” in the tourism environment because the new provincial and national government had put pressure on municipalities to deliver.
“We are seeing the slow turnaround, progress now in these municipalities,” he said.
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