Rwanda has been ranked the fourth least corrupt African country by the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project.

The country scored 70.8 percent, the fourth highest score, behind Mauritius with 73.2 percent, Cape Verde with 74.6 percent and Botswana which is the least corrupt African country with a score of 79.9percent.

The 2010 World Bank WGI Report released this week indicates that Rwanda has made good progress compared to other Sub-Saharan Africa countries in combating corruption.

The annual report which aggregates and produces individual governance indicators for 213 economies over the period 1996–2010, for six dimensions of governance noted that Rwanda has considerably reduced corruption.

Rwanda emerged the most improved country compared to other African countries ranked since 2006 to 2010. The country’s was also recognised for steady improvement over the years, scoring 20.0 percent in 1996 to 70.8 percent in 2010.

Reacting to the report, the Deputy Ombudsman in charge of fighting corruption and other related offences, Augustin Nzindukiyimana, said the rankings recognise the efforts of the leadership over the past years to combat the vice.

"Indeed these are commendable results in combating corruption, but much more efforts are still required because we aim at becoming the first, worldwide.

"Rwanda is lucky to have leaders with a high political will to fight against corruption,” he said.

Rwanda faired well on the six parameters used to measure corruption which include Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption.

Nzindukiyimana said that the country’s ranking is a clear indication of Rwanda’s zero tolerance stance to graft.

The aggregate indicators combine the views of a large number of enterprises, citizens and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries.

The individual data sources underlying the aggregate indicators are drawn from a diverse variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organisations, and international organisations.

The six aggregate indicators and the underlying data sources can be viewed interactively on the "Access Governance Indicators" page.

The WGI are produced by Daniel Kaufmann, Brookings Institution, Aart Kraay, World Bank Development Research Group and Massimo Mastruzzi, World Bank Institute

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