World Happiness Report 2024: Nigerians rank 10th happiest people in Africa, see global ranking

Mauritius is the happiest country in Africa per the recently released World Happiness Report. The annual report was released to mark the United Nations International Day of Happiness on March 20.

The report draws on global survey data from people in more than 140 countries. Countries are ranked on happiness based on their average life evaluations over the three preceding years, in this case 2021 to 2023.

The report is a partnership of Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an editorial board.

Mauritius ranks 1st in Africa scoring 5.186 points. They rank 70th globally. South Africa, the second happiest country in Africa ranked 83rd globally scoring 5.422 points while Algeria picked the third spot on the continent and was ranked 85th in the world. The North African country scored 5.364 points.

Congo, fourth in Africa ranks 89 globally and Mozambique, 5th in Africa ranks 90 in the world to complete the top 5.

Nigeria, the most populous black nation in the world is the 10th happiest country in Africa and placed 102 on the global list.

Finland is ranked the world’s happiest country.

John Helliwell, emeritus professor of economics at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report said participants where asked to score their life as a whole in a survey.

“And you find out Finland’s pretty rich in all of those things, like wallets being returned if they’re dropped in the street, people helping each other day in and day out, very high quality and universally distributed health and education opportunities — so everyone more or less comes out of the starting gate the same,” he said.

He also noted that Finland has happy immigrants, “so it’s something that they’re prepared to share with newcomers.”

The report looks at six key variables to help explain life evaluations: GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

Finland’s Nordic neighbors also earned reliably high scores with Denmark (No. 2), Iceland (No. 3) and Sweden (No. 4) in the top five, and Norway (No. 7) comfortably ranking in the top 10, reports CNN.

The United States and Germany dropped out of the top 20 due to the rise in happiness among other countries including Czechia (No. 18), Lithuania (No. 19) and Slovenia (No. 21). Both countries ranked 23rd and 24th respectfully.

The United Kingdom was number 20 on the list.

Here are the top 10 most happiest countries in Africa 2023, according to World Happiness Report

1) Mauritius

2) Algeria

3) South Africa

4) Congo Republic

5) Mozambique

6) Gabon

7) Ivory Coast

8) Guinea

9) Senegal

10) Nigeria

11) Cameroon