Measuring the unmeasurable
By Mo Ibrahim | Published: 01 October, 2009
All of us are familiar with alarmist media headlines, particularly with regards to Africa. One current strand of this type of rhetoric concerns the projected failure of some countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals. In this case alarm is warranted. As we draw near to 2015, the date by which the MDGs are supposed to have been achieved, it is vital that we ensure that all countries are moving in the right direction. In 2010 there will be a review of progress towards the MDGs. However, tracking whether or not these countries are actually on course to meet the goals is virtually impossible due to the unavailability of robust data.
Despite the world’s focus on underdevelopment, comprehensive data to monitor the success of development efforts is unavailable. Poverty data for the majority of sub-Saharan Africa is non-existent, extremely patchy or completely out-of-date. Should you require data on whether people live on less than $1 a day or below their national poverty levels, the latest available data for Malawi is from 1998 and the most recent data for Niger dates all the way back to 1993. This undermines our ability to assess, with any degree of scientific accuracy, whether efforts to raise people out of poverty in Africa have been successful or not. In the absence of reliable data on the real outcomes of development spending we are forced to rely on inputs – how much was spent. This allows for no cost effectiveness analysis.
At the Mo Ibrahim Foundation we have long argued for the need for improved statistical data on Africa in all areas from health to the economy. When we launched the Foundation in 2006 we had two core initiatives; the prize that grabs all the headlines, and the Ibrahim Index which we quickly came to view as the core of our work. We aim to produce the most comprehensive assessment of governance in sub-Saharan Africa as a tool for citizens and civil society to hold their governments to account. We provide data on the deliverables of governance that affect ordinary citizens’ lives.
This year has seen the beginning of a transition process for the index through which we aim to transfer responsibility for its compilation to African institutions. The 2009 Ibrahim Index was produced by a research team at the Foundation with advice and input from a technical committee and an advisory council of African academics and governance experts. This transfer will help us to access better data about sub-Saharan Africa, as well as entrenching African ownership of the project.
Despite the lack of data, particularly from recent years, we have been insistent that we only include data that is reliable and robust, comprehensive in its coverage and reflective of the performance of current administrations. We chose to track indicators that are immediately demonstrative of strong policy interventions. Conversely we have had to drop many indicators that require a longer time to reflect change. Although this means that we are no longer monitoring areas which many may expect, for example the number of trained doctors in a country, we are assessing areas in which the success or failure of a government to deliver public goods to its citizens is starkly evident, for example immunisation. Similarly we have chosen indicators for which we know data is regularly updated to ensure that government activities are genuinely reflected. It is in this context that we have reluctantly dropped three standard poverty indicators despite our certainty that poverty reduction is one of the most vital deliverables of good governance.
Tracking achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is equally challenging. For example, the goal around gender equality and women’s empowerment focuses solely on women’s educational opportunities and tracks only enrolment of women in all levels of education. However, it is the graduation of women from educational institutions that can accurately benchmark success in gender empowerment. In the absence of the data for informed analysis we are presented with interesting, but not instructive, information.
However, in the quest for better data on Africa we cannot, and should not, do it alone. While we will continue to work on this issue, we urge the multilateral agencies that concentrate their resources on development to consider setting up a continent-wide project for enhancing statistical capacity in Africa. We must all be able to measure accurately and reliably where development interventions are working and where they are not. The lack of poverty data is symptomatic of a broader problem that challenges the accountability and governance of the development sector itself.
Mohammed Ibrahim is the founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the former chairman of Celtel
