World’s best passports: Ghana’s ranked 70th

Ghana was ranked 70th with a score of 57 in terms of the world’s best passports, according to 2017 Passport Index rankings.

The country was ranked the same position with Uganda, Mongolia and China.

The Index ranked national passports by the cross-border access they bring, assigning a “visa-free score” according to the number of countries a passport holder can visit visa-free or with visa on arrival.

South Africa was the leading country on the African continent, with a score of 90, ranking it 49th in the world, followed by Botswana with a score of 69 (59th in the world), Lesotho with a score of 66 (61st in the world) and Malawi with a score of 65 (62nd in the world).

The lowest-scoring African countries were Nigeria (41 scores) and ranked 87th globally, Ethiopia (34 scores) and South Sudan (34 scores) ranked 93rd respectively and Somalia (34 scores) ranked 94th in the world.

Germany was ranked number one in the world with a visa-free score of 157. Singapore however overtook South Korea and became the highest ranked Asian passport, with a visa free score of 156. The world’s least-desirable passport went to Afghanistan, with a score of just 23 and ranked 98th in the world.

The newly added World Openness Score (WOS) tracks the progression of freedom of mobility across the globe.

The world openness score in 2016 was 17 925. In the first few days of 2017, the score has increased to 17 948.

The comparison tool also has a newly added Improve function, which demonstrates how the addition of one or more passports to an existing travel document can improve the holder’s Global Mobility Score (GMS).

New Top 10 Passport Power Ranking:

1. 157 – Germany

2. 156 – Singapore, Sweden

3. 155 – Denmark, Finland, France, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, UK, USA

4. 154 – Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Japan

5. 153 – Malaysia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand

6. 152 – Greece, South Korea, Australia

7. 151 – Czech Republic, Iceland

8. 150 – Hungary

9. 149 – Malta, Poland

10. 148 – Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia