Mauritius, the Happiest Country in Africa

The country, with a score of 5.5 on a scale of 0-9, ahead of Hong Kong, Portugal, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, among others. South Africa and Botswana, often considered on the same footing as Mauritius, are respectively the 90th and 117th in a ranking involving 156 countries in total. 

The report says the Earth Institute, is essentially influenced by external factors such as good governance, personal freedom, freedom from corruption, social support and the conditions and quality of work."These variables Have a More Powerful effect on happiness", says the American institution whose main mission is to study and identify solutions to complex problems facing the world's population. 

Performance of Mauritius allows the dark continent of save the day due to bad ratings to other African countries including Togo, Sierra Leone, Benin and Central African Republic, at the bottom of the ladder. 

"The indicator pertains to people’s subjective assessment of the government’s efficiency in various areas. To test people’s perceptions of overall service delivery in the country, respondents are asked to rate the performance of the government in the past 12 months on seven major objectives of good governance: employment, equality, education, health, anti-corruption, environment, culture" the report said. 

The ranking is dominated by European countries, with Denmark (7.8), Finland (7.6), Norway (7.5) and the Netherlands (7.4) to top four places. Canada seeps into fifth place ahead of Switzerland and Sweden. Our Australian neighbours are not far behind, ranked in ninth place, with a length of New Zealand. In contrast, the so-called rich countries, the United States, Britain and France are 11th, 18th and 23rd.