2000

2002

2005

Sustainable Economic Opportunity

Full datasets for each sub-sub-category are linked to in the text below
and at the foot of this page.

Sustainable economic opportunity is an essential political good. Well-governed nation-states enable their citizens to pursue personal entrepreneurial goals and potentially prosper. They do so by providing regulatory frameworks conducive to such prosperity and by creating stable and forward-looking macroeconomic and fiscal policy environments that facilitate and encourage national and personal wealth creation. Arteries of commerce—a robust physical communications and transportation infrastructure—are also critical to the achievement of these national and personal objectives. Significant, too, is the extent to which African countries are safeguarding their environments. Doing so assists in sustaining economic opportunity. In order to measure the extent to which nation-states are providing this essential political good and its components, the Index of African Governance examines their twelve critical constituent parts, using twelve SSCs in four sub-categories:

Wealth Creation

1. GDP per capita, using WDI figures.

2. Economic growth, measured in terms of annual percentage changes in GDP per capita, using WDI figures.

Macoeconomic Stability and Financial Integrity

1. Annual inflation rates, using data from the IMF World Economic Outlook.

2. Government budget deficits and surpluses as a percentage of GDP, using data from the African Development Bank’s Selected Statistics on African Countries.

3. Reliability of financial institutions, based on “Contract Intensive Money (CIM),” an indicator developed by Clague, Keefer, Knack, and Olsen to measure the extent to which money is held in bank deposits, etc. (suggesting higher reliability), rather than currency (suggesting lower reliability).¹ Figures for each country are calculated by us, using data from the IMF’s International Financial Statistics. (See the detailed definition and explanation in the notes on this SSC.)

4. The overall business environment, using as a proxy the number of days necessary to start a business. Figures are drawn from the World Bank’s Doing Business surveys.

The Arteries of Commerce

1. The density of a nation’s road network (both paved and unpaved) per square kilometer of national land, from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s The World Factbook 2007 online (version updated 15 March 2007) and the International Road Federation, IRF World Road Statistics 2005 (Data 1999 to 2003) (Switzerland, 2005) and IRF World Road Statistics 2003 (Data 1997 to 2001) (Switzerland, 2003).

2. The availability and reliability of electricity, measured as the number of days per year during which there were electrical outages, based on the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys.

3. Mobile (cellular) telephone subscribers (both pre- and post-paid) per 100 inhabitants, from the International Telecommunication Union.

4. Computer users per 100 inhabitants, based on estimates from the International Telecommunication Union.

5. Internet users per 100 inhabitants, based on estimates from the International Telecommunication Union.

Environmental Sensitivity

1. As measured by the Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by the Center for Environmental Law & Policy (Yale University) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (Columbia University), in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.² The EPI is a composite index that assesses performance on two broad goals: (1) reduction of environmental stresses on human health; and (2) promotion of ecosystem vitality and natural resource management. It is based on sixteen indicators in six policy areas: environmental health, air quality, water resources, productive natural resources, biodiversity and habitat, and sustainable energy.

Special Note

The Index of African Governance’s Indicator for Sustainable Economic Opportunity is not constructed in the same manner, or with the same aims, as various worthy efforts to epitomize and encapsulate Sustainable Development.³ For example, the U.S. Interagency Working Group on Sustainable Development Indicators and the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development focus largely on environmental sustainability, broadly defined. Other projects address environmental concerns, along with indicators of human development (e.g., the World Conservation Union’s Wellbeing Index) and community and civic life (e.g., the Boston Indicators Project).

Notes and datasets for sub-sub-categories in Sustainable Economic Opportunity

¹ Christopher Clague, Philip Keefer, Stephen Knack, and Mancur Olsen, “Contract-Intensive Money: Contract Enforcement, Property Rights, and Economic Performance,” Journal of Economic Growth, IV (1999), 185-211.

² Daniel C. Esty, Marc A. Levy, Tanja Srebotnjak, Alexander de Sherbinin, Christine H. Kim, and Bridget Anderson, Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index (New Haven, 2006).

³ For a review of the literature, see Thomas M. Parris and Robert W. Kates, “Characterizing and Measuring Sustainable Development,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources, XXVIII (2003), 559-586.