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Synthesis of the Methodology

The IIAG governance framework comprises four categories: Security & Rule of Law, Participation, Rights & Inclusion, Foundations for Economic Opportunity and Human Development. These categories are made up of 16 sub-categories, consisting of 81 indicators. The 2022 IIAG is calculated using data from 47 independent, external data sources.

The IIAG is refined on a biennial basis. Refinements may be methodological, or based on the inclusion or exclusion of indicators. When new historical data are made available, or the structure of the IIAG is strengthened, the entire data set is updated for the whole time series. Users of the Index should therefore always reference the most recent version of the IIAG data set.

Calculation Stages

  • Indicators that are consistent with the Foundation’s definition of governance and meet specific standards of quality, periodicity and country coverage are selected and missing raw data values are estimated.
  • Raw data come in different scales from source. In order to be compared and combined, data are transformed to a standardised range of 0.0-100.0, where 100.0 is the best possible score.
  • Once the 81 indicators have been transformed to a common scale, a simple method of aggregation is applied to calculate the scores. The overall score is the average of the underlying category scores; the category scores the average of their underlying sub-categories, and the sub-categories the average of their constituent indicators.

Note on Decimal Place Precision in the 2022 IIAG

All figures on IIAG outputs are displayed to one decimal place. The calculation method to arrive at these scores is as follows:

  • Country scores are calculated on full-precision raw data values (using the exact values as they are collected from source). All scores are then rounded to one decimal place.
  • Group averages are calculated on the rounded, one decimal place country scores.
  • Both trends over time and ranks are calculated on the scores to one decimal place.

The exceptions to this are the annual average trend figures. These are calculated on the rounded trends over time, and displayed to two decimal places. Classifications are assigned based on the full precision of the annual average trend.

Further details of the methodology, as well as methodologies of commissioned datasets and links to all data sources can be found on our website

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    • Public Perception of Overall Governance

    About Citizens’ Voices

    As citizens are the recipients of public leadership and governance, the assessment of governance performance of the IIAG is accompanied by the Citizens’ Voices dataset in an effort to contextualise the official and expert assessment data in the IIAG with the reality on the ground as perceived by citizens.

    MIF has been working with and supporting Afrobarometer, the leading pan-African research institution conducting public opinion surveys on the continent, and the 2022 IIAG framework gives these more prominence. Formerly scattered at various levels in the IIAG, citizens’ assessments of various governance components are now highlighted in a Citizens’ Voices section, providing a comprehensive 'reality check' to complement the IIAG results.

    This section mirrors the IIAG categories and provides public perception data on the closest proxies to the IIAG measures. However, whilst these measures are available to compare across the IIAG, it is important to note that their scores do not form part of the calculation for Overall Governance.