Failed states index condemned

The Foreign Policy magazine failed States Index which ranked Zimbabwe as number five among failed states has itself been condemned as a failed index by a blog Africa is a Country.

The blog says Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace should either radically rethink the index, which they publish in collaboration every year, or abandon it altogether.

“We just can’t take it seriously. It’s a failed index,” the blog says.

The 2012 index condemns the entire African continent saying it has no stable state. Even South Africa is described as borderline.

Zimbabwe is described as a failed state because: “After more than three decades of strongman Robert Mugabe’s misrule — punctuated by massacres, assassinations, and government-led campaigns against white farmers — Zimbabwe is in shambles.

“The country’s economy has deteriorated for much of the past decade, and in 2008 hyperinflation peaked at an annual rate that one economist calculated as the second highest in world history.

“Since then, the economy has begun to expand again, growing by an estimated 6 percent in 2011, but Zimbabwe remains politically fragile: Mugabe’s power-sharing arrangement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains more theory than reality.

“The country’s future, and how much worse it will sink on this list, depends largely on who will rule when the 88-year-old Mugabe dies,” the country’s Postcard from Hell says.

Here is the full analysis by Africa is a country.

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