Ghanaians are 7th happiest in Africa, 95th globally - Report

Ghana ranked 7th in Africa in the 2020 edition of the World Happiness Report 2021 but 95th globally on a 149-nation table.

The report focused largely on the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on lives of people across the world. Ghana scored 5.088 out of a possible 10 points.

Ghana placed behind the likes of Mauritius, Libya, Congo Brazzaville, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Senegal, the report noted. Ghana was sandwiched between Senegal and Niger.

The current report is the ninth since the first and the findings spanned the period between 2018 - 2020.

"Although the World Happiness Reports are based on a wide variety of data, the most important source has always been the Gallup World Poll, which is unique in the range and comparability of its global series of annual surveys," the authors said.

Some of the areas the authors of the current looked at were: Life under COVID-19; Happiness, Trust and Deaths under COVID-19; COVID-19 Prevalence and Well-being: Lessons from East Asia and Reasons for Asia-Pacific Success in Suppressing COVID-19.

Other areas included: Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic; Social Connection and Well-Being during COVID-19 and 7 Work and Well-being during COVID-19: Impact, Inequalities, Resilience, and the Future of Work.

Africa's happiest countries are listed below in descending order with their global scores:

50. Mauritius
80. Libya
83. Congo (Brazzaville)
85. Ivory Coast
91. Cameroon
92. Senegal
95. Ghana
96. Niger
99. Benin
98. Gambia

The world's 10 happiest countries are listed below

1. Finland (7.842)
2. Denmark (7.620)
3. Switzerland (7.571)
4. Iceland (7.554)
5. Netherlands (7.464)
6. Norway (7.392)
7. Sweden (7.363)
8. Luxembourg (7.324)*
9. New Zealand (7.277)
10. Austria (7.268)

The least happiest countries in the world included among others Lesotho, Botswana, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Afghanistan was the last on the list.

The authors recorded "significantly higher frequency of negative emotions" in just over a third of the countries. Authors noted that most of the negative emotions had likely been caused by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Finland "ranked very high on the measures of mutual trust which helped to protect lives and livelihoods during the pandemic," the authors said.

The Nordic nation of 5.5 million people managed the pandemic far better that the majority of European countries during the pandemic, with just over 70,000 cases and 805 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.