Mo Ibrahim: To govern Africa, you need the facts

The launch of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance once again brings the issue of governance to the centre stage. While many of the results may conform with people’s intuition, there are also some surprises.

One of those surprises is the continued lack of robust and comprehensive data with which to assess our continent. To take just one example, poverty data for the majority of sub-Saharan Africa is non-existent, extremely patchy or completely out-of-date.