About the Africa Integrity Indicators

The Africa Integrity Indicators (AII)  is a research project initiated by Global Integrity in 2012, in collaboration with the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. AII focuses on African governance in practice, examining how policies are implemented to support governments, citizens, and civil society and assessing key social, economic, political, and anti-corruption mechanisms at the national level across all 54 countries of the African continent. Starting with the 11th round (2023), data for AII will be collected and published by the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP). Global Integrity and AFIDEP collaborated on the data collection for the 10th round of AII (2022).

Every year, AII produces data through the help of over 120 contributors to generate original governance data: in-country researchers, country specialists, thematic experts, editors. Our dataset evaluates both the in-law and in-practice aspects of corruption and governance. Measuring both the existing legal framework and the “in-practice” implementation is key in our effort to produce actionable governance data that help governments, citizens and civil society understand the implementation gap between law and practice, evaluate the status quo and identify intervention points for subsequent reform efforts.

Since 2019, our dataset has been focusing on 54 in-practice indicators, divided into two main categories: 

Transparency and Accountability

Drawing from the indicators of the Global Integrity Report (GIR), the Transparency and Accountability category consists of 30 indicators examining issues divided in the thematic areas of rule of law, accountability, elections, public management integrity, civil service integrity, and access to information. The indicators look into the transparency of the public procurement process, media freedom, asset disclosure requirements, independence of the judiciary, and conflict of interest laws, among many others.

Social Development

The Social Development category consists of 24 indicators about gender, rights, welfare, business environment, health, and education. These indicators have been designed to complement the  Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) in areas not covered by the secondary data sources it employs. As such, it evaluates factual and precise aspects of social development, but does not deliver an aggregate score reflecting a general assessment about an issue.

In prior rounds, Global Integrity researched additional indicators that can still be accessed on the data page. Our research follows a strict methodology.

More information on our methodology and our contributors can be found by following the links below: