Angola as Africa's happiest country? Wait a minute...

Should researchers hold up their hand when they get material new information that changes aspects of an already released study? Or should they just remain quiet hoping these escapes the attention of most?

Designed to be debated ahead of the upcoming UN General Assembly, this second study of global well-being is teeming with rich data, drilling down from the basic concept of happiness as popularly expressed, down to the trends in each country.

In other words it is a gold seam of information for public policy makers who would want to gauge the impact of their choices.

The usual suspects, the Scandinavian countries, as to be expected placed top. But it was the ranking of Angola as Africa?s happiest country, ahead of last year?s leader-- and most people?s choice Mauritius-- that raised the eyebrows.

Given happiness is such a subjective trait?both as a current emotion and an overall judgment of one?s life circumstances?this may very well be the case according to Angola?s citizens.

But to those more attuned to the goings-on and little nuances on the continent, many would have been forgiven for scratching their heads.

The six key variables used to draw up the UN list include GDP per capita, social support systems, prevalence of generosity, years of healthy life expectancy, perception of corruption, and the freedom to make life choices.

Angola would presumably score well on the first three, and score poorly on the last three. For instance, recovering from a debilitating civil war, the country scores 148th on the UN?s Human Development Index, and is still battling--with Chinese help-- to fix basic social infrastructure taken down in the war.

The country is also perceived as one of the most corrupt and most unequal despite its abundant oil and mineral wealth that unfortunately ends up in the pockets of the tight-knit ruling elite. This is not to slight Angola?s gains since the end of the 27-year war, but this should have been a red flag for the researchers.

And so we got in touch with the researchers, who readily admitted that new data on Angola had indeed come into view, but due to tight deadlines had not been factored into the latest report.

Had this been done Angola would have ended up with an overall score of 4.97, equal with post-conflict Mozambique at eighth position. And pushed Mauritius back top.

Experts from pollster Gallup--which the Happiness Report heavily relies on-- said it had been difficult to get representative samples from Angola, especially in the mined rural areas. Other troublesome areas were in Arab countries that have substantial non-Arab populations.

The take home message here is that while numbers never lie, one should interrogate them further when something doesn?t add up, as in the Angolan case, or of other puzzling top rankers such as of Zimbabwe and DR Congo.

Failing to do this disregards the efforts of victims of political and other oppression of rights, and those who risk their lives to campaign for a better life in such countries.

Of course this is not to suggest that Angola will never get there.

Twitter: @ShrewdAfrican, E-mail: lmwiti@ke.nationmedia.com

Source: http://www.africareview.com/Blogs/-/979192/1996678/-/u2qmqnz/-/index.html

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