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For most politicians, poverty campaigners and pop stars the world is divided up into DEVELOPED and DEVELOPING countries. However, as far as sub-Saharan Africa is concerned, that is much too ambitious for both of these terms imply progress. With ever increasing mouths to feed the best that can be said for most countries there is that they are STAGNATING nations (STAGNATIONS). And incredibly even this new term fails to capture all countries there for some, like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe, are UNDEVELOPING, having left their best days far behind as their paralysed economies drag their people back to subsistence survival.

This dismal subcontinental under performance, which keeps hundreds of millions of Africans locked in perpetual poverty, is blamed on a combination of factors - poor climate, bad geography, perennial famines, water shortages, pervasive illiteracy, chronic diseases, smouldering conflicts, rampant corruption, economic mismanagement, weak institutions, tribalism, strangling bureaucracy, lack of property rights, nepotism, dilapidated infrastructure, insufficient overseas aid, unpayable debts, restrictive trade barriers, multinational corporations.

Most of these are undoubtedly formidable objects but in other parts of the developing world many governments are successfully tackling them and going on to lay the foundations for improving living standards. What, then, prevents countries in sub-Saharan Africa from doing the same?

The answer in one word is 'GOVERNANCE'.

According to US President Barrack Obama 'development depends on good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential.' Similarly, the respected UK based 'Economist' magazine came to the same conclusion stating that 'Africa remains poor because of bad government'. In the same vein, Mo Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born cellphone magnate, who sponsors the annual Ibrahim Index of African Governance, in delivering the 2009 findings said that 'the main problem impeding our (African) development is governance - or rather the lack of it. All good things start from good governance; all bad things start from bad governance.'

The poor standard of governance in sub-Saharan Africa is an issue which Africans and the international community has failed to confront for far too long. The African Union is ambivalent - outwardly critical in words but inwardly failing to censure and bring about change. International NGO's, like Oxfam and Christian Aid, prefer to mislead their supporters by pointing the finger of blame at the West and putting Africa's lack of progress down to restrictive trade practices and lack of overseas aid. Western governments, for fear of losing influence and /or being branded racist, prefer to sweep the glaring problems of corruption and malfeasance on the continent under the carpet, pretending instead to believe that governance is actually improving. As a result, little has changed in the life of the majority of Africans in the last 50 years.

Governance, then, is the 'African elephant in the room' when it comes to tackling poverty on the continent. Everyone knows it is there but no one wants to confront it. In 2010, this can no longer be acceptable. Surely the time has come for all African governments to come under scrutiny in order to ascertain which are actively trying to work for the benefit of their people and which clearly have an alternative agenda. But how is this to be done?

On this website, under STATE OF THE WORLD, we lay out what life is like for most Africans today in comparison with that in the developed world. Then, under the various issues - FOOD, WATER, HEALTH, EDUCATION, TRADE etc., we examine more closely each category as it relates to Africa today. Finally, in RECOMMENDATIONS, in a comprehensive league table, we assess the quality of governance in all sub-Saharan African nations. We then go on to suggest how the information contained in this table, coupled with the more progressive use of overseas aid donated by wealthy countries, could go a long way to improving the standard of governance there. And, this, in turn, should lead, at long last, to the people of Africa enjoying the basics of life which they have been denied for far too long.

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