'Afro-optimism' is called for.

Many developing country governments are making important gains in the control of corruption, some of them matching rich country performance in overall governance measures, says this year's Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) compiled by World Bank researchers. "Some countries are making rapid progress in governance, including in Africa, showing that a measure of 'Afro-optimism' is called for," says Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the report and director of governance at the World Bank Institute. He acknowledges, however, that the findings also show large variation in performance across countries, and even among neighbours within each continent. "Progress reflects reforms in those countries where political leaders, policymakers, civil society and the private sector view good governance and corruption control as crucial for sustained and shared growth." Botswana and Mauritius were amongst a dozen emerging economies singled out as matching the performance of rich countries on key dimensions of governance. "They score higher on key dimensions of governance than industrialised countries such as Greece or Italy. And in many cases these differences are statistically significant," says the report.