An American research organization has ranked President Robert Mugabe as one of the worst leaders in sub-saharan Africa.
As African leaders attend the US-Africa Summit in Washington for the second-day running, an American based research organization, Gallup, yesterday released its findings on the performance of leaders in the sub-Saharan region.
Malian President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was ranked the best leader followed by Botswana President Ian Khama while President Mugabe was ranked 21 out of 26 leaders in the region.
President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was ranked number 26.
The ratings were based on face to face interviews with people in the respective countries in the sub-Saharan African region.
Editor of the News Leader newspaper, Itai Dzamara, told VOA Studio 7 that the findings were influenced by the country’s poor economic performance.
Dzamara adds that failure to deal with corruption has proved to be President Robert Mugabe’s biggest undoing.
Political analyst and director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute says the Gallup report is far from the truth as South African President Jacob Zuma could not be regarded as worse off than President Mugabe. Mr. Zuma is ranked 25th.
Senior minister Simon Khaya-Moyo in President Mugabe’s office, who’s also Zanu PF national chairperson, dismissed Gallup’s research findings saying the organization was working in cahoots with the Obama administration to tarnish the image of the Zimbabwean leader.
But this was dimissed by Ruhanya.
The research findings were released yesterday when most the US-Africa summit meeting opened in Washington DC.
America snubbed President Mugabe allegedly for his poor human rights record together with leaders of three other African nations.
The summit is expected to tackle issues related to strengthening political and economic ties between Washington and the rest of Africa.