U.S. News & World Report, an inconsistent multi-platform publisher of news and information which recently painted Ghana black in terms of corruption, has in a twist of events ranked the country as one of the best countries in Africa.
A survey published on its website usnews.com puts Ghana ahead of Rwanda, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and other known major countries on the continent.
The survey, according to the media organisation, covered nine sub-rankings that rolled into the Best Countries. The sub-rankings are Adventure, which took two per cent of the marks; Citizenship, 15.88 percent; Cultural Influence 12.96 per cent; Entrepreneurship 17.87 per cent and Heritage 1.13 per cent.
Other sub-rankings are Movers 14.36per cent; Open for Business11.08 per cent; Power 7.95 per cent and Quality of Life 16.77 per cent.
According to the report, Ghana placed fifth on the number of African countries surveyed. Egypt with a population of 98.4 million, a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $250.9 billion and a GDP Per capita income of $13,358, was ranked first in Africa with South Africa, Morocco and Kenya coming second, third and fourth respectively.
Corruption Report
The website had earlier in a publication claimed that Ghana was the second most corrupt country in Africa. The website, which quoted Transparency International as its source, claimed Ghana was followed by Nigeria, with South Africa perceived as the most corrupt nation on the continent, giving room for propagandist and political spinning agents to taint the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government with corruption.
GII Response
However, the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), a local chapter of Transparency International (TI) debunked the report that placed Ghana as the second most corrupt country in Africa.
In a statement issued Tuesday, August 20, 2019, GII said it has not released any report and urged the public to disregard the media report.
Rather, GII stated that Ghana has improved on the world corruption rankings by placing 78 out of 180 countries on the 2018 global Corruption Perception Index (CPI), released early 2019.
According to the report, in 2018, Ghana scored 41 out of a possible score of 100, suggesting that the country’s performance had improved by one point from its 2017 score of 40.
Of the respondents, 11,591 were informed elites; 6,081 were business decision-makers and 6,927 were considered general public.
Some respondents were considered both informed elites and business decision-makers.
According to the report, regardless of demographics or participant type, each individual’s responses weighed equally in the results.
Inconsistency
Meanwhile, in a twist of events, the website which did not cite any particular source in its recent report claims it surveyed 73 countries globally. It explained that, for a country to be added to the list to be surveyed, it had to meet four criteria within the most recent year for which data are available specific to each benchmark.
The criteria are that a country must be among the top 100 countries in terms of GDP in 2017; top 100 countries in terms of foreign direct investment inflows in 20176 and top 100 countries in terms of international tourism receipts in 2017, all based on World Bank data.
The other criterion is to be among the top 150 countries in the U.N.’s Human Development Index, based on the 2017 report.
This further deepens its inconsistency as to how criteria set for 100 countries would be used to assess 73 countries. The supposed survey further stated that a total of 20,548 individuals from 36 countries in four regions – the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East and Africa – were surveyed.
The decision to put Middle East and Africa together in the same region and surveyed people from only 36 countries further discredits the report and deepens its own confusion that it sorts to share with everyone.
