A Rising Average Can Hide a Weakening Mandate

An institution reports that its overall performance has improved. Revenue is up, enrolment has expanded, infrastructure has been delivered, services are faster or more people have been reached. The average is positive, the ranking is respectable and the presentation is reassuring.

Yet beneath that average, people may be less able to question decisions. Complaints may take longer to resolve. Safety may be deteriorating. Rules may be applied less consistently. Staff or citizens may experience the institution as more distant even while its visible outputs grow.

This is not a technical footnote. It is a leadership problem. A composite score can summarise a complex reality, but it can also allow strength in one dimension to offset decline in another. Values-based leadership must therefore ask what the average conceals, which gains are genuinely reinforcing and which losses cannot ethically be compensated by success elsewhere.

The governing question is not only whether the total moved upward. It is whether the institution improved without weakening the conditions that make its performance legitimate, durable and open to correction.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation released the 2026 Ibrahim Index of African Governance on 31 October. The index assesses governance across all 54 African countries using 319 variables drawn from 59 datasets and 51 source institutions. It organises the evidence into 16 sub-categories and four broad categories: Security and Rule of Law; Participation,…