No progress in Africa

REPORT: GRINDS TO A HALT AS SECURITY, POLITICAL RIGHTS DETERIORATE

- Nairobi

Progress on governance in Africa has ground to a halt as security and political rights deteriorate in many countries, according to the latest report by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, published yesterday.

"It's not pretty," Ibrahim said ahead of the release of the report. "Africa made great progress in the early decades of this century, but in the past 10 years we see that there has been very slow progress and in the past five years things have started to stagnate and even deteriorate in some circumstances."

Ibrahim, 78, is a Sudanese-British billionaire who made a fortune in telecoms and ploughed it into monitoring and encouraging better governance across Africa. His foundation's index, published every two years, is considered the most comprehensive overview of the topic, crunching data for 322 variables, including public services, justice, corruption and security.