Zambia

No dimension reaches 50 on usable evidence. Raise Building first, at 20.7. Trust needs more evidence: confidence is 0.21.

Raise, lowest first

Raise, lowest first
Dimension	Confidence	Score
Building	0.57	20.7
Anticipation	0.46	23.2
Learning	0.55	32.0
Adaptability	0.62	40.0

Measure before managing

Measure before managing
Dimension	Confidence	Score
Trust	0.21	77.4
Coordination	0.29	84.7
Shared Purpose	0.29	36.7
Agency	0.30	38.3
Experimentation	0.41	1.2

These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.

Why this country is included: Added in the 9.0.0 completion, which takes every country of a million people or more that is measurable in all nine capabilities.

Download this country as CSV

Anticipation23.2Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?

ZambiaCompare with

Read Zambia beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.

Usable or good evidence
Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.

A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.

Zambia dimension summary

Coordination	Coordination How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.29	2 of 5	1.00	no trend	50.0	-34.7
Trust	Trust How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.21	2 of 7	1.00	no trend	47.0	-30.4
Adaptability	Adaptability How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.62	4 of 6	1.00	no trend	31.0	-9.0
Agency	Agency How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.30	2 of 5	0.79	no trend	34.0	-4.3
Shared Purpose	Shared Purpose To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.29	2 of 6	0.92	+13.9(2)	42.0	+5.3
Learning	Learning How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.55	3 of 4	0.81	no trend	29.0	-3.0
Anticipation	Anticipation How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.46	2 of 4	0.96	+7.2(2)	24.0	+0.8
Building	Building How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.57	4 of 6	0.90	-10.6(3)	19.0	-1.7
Experimentation	Experimentation How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved? Scores use one 0 to 100 scale for all countries. Each flag is a country, and the ring around it carries how well evidenced that score is. The band beside each score in the list shows its evidence level, and the last column shows the trend and the number of indicators behind it. Loading…	0.41	4 of 9	1.00	-0.1(3)	7.0	+5.8

How to read this page

Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.

A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.

direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.

Confidence

very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.

A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.

Anticipation

How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?

+7.2 over 10 years, from 16.0 in 2016 to 23.2 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Scientific articles
Scientific and technical journal articles published, per million people.
Measured in articles per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 367.3articles per million people
Year: 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Scientific articles
Scientific and technical journal articles published, per million people.
Measured in articles per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
History

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Statistical performance
World Bank Statistical Performance Indicators overall score for the national statistical system.
Measured in index 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 64.168index 0-100
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Statistical performance
World Bank Statistical Performance Indicators overall score for the national statistical system.
Measured in index 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
History

Government foresight capacity

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.

Long-horizon research commitments

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of new grants
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.

Conditions, not scored

What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.

R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2008
0.28 % of GDP, rank 78 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
The value is from 2008, more than 15 years old.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2008
41.9 per million people, rank 100 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
The value is from 2008, more than 15 years old.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
80.5 per million people, rank 104 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

22.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Statistics are mid-frame, but research output is near the floor and both the debt default and the Kariba drought collapse were foreseeable. I hold.
24.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Statistical capacity is mid-frame and research output is tiny. The 2024 drought and Kariba hydropower collapse were foreseeable and preparation was thin, so I hold near the indicator.
27.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Statistical performance is mid-frame at a low income, a conversion worth some credit. Research output is near the floor and the 2020 default and Kariba drought were foreseeable.

Agency

How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
New business density
New limited liability companies registered per 1,000 working-age people.
Measured in per 1,000 aged 15-64; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 1.501per 1,000 aged 15-64
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
New business density
New limited liability companies registered per 1,000 working-age people.
Measured in per 1,000 aged 15-64; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
History

Time to start a business

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datadays
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. Its successor, B-READY, publishes the time and cost to register a firm as a score, and business entry efficiency carries that construct. See D23.

Business entry efficiency

missing

Raw value: no datascore 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.BE.P3)
History: no data

Note: Activation energy, measured directly: the third pillar of B-READY business entry, which replaces time to start a business (D167). The World Bank publishes a score, not days, and the score adds the registration cost and the route for a foreign firm, so a cheap but slow registration and a fast but costly one can score alike. B-READY covered 74 of 125 countries in the 2025 round, and the countries it has not reached have no value.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Procedures to start a business
Number of separate official procedures to register a company.
Measured in count; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 7count
Year: 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Procedures to start a business
Number of separate official procedures to register a company.
Measured in count; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
History

Adults doing digital tasks

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.

Perceived control over life

missing

Raw value: no datamean 1-10
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
History: no data

Note: A perception: the publisher-weighted mean, on a 1 to 10 scale, of how much freedom of choice and control respondents feel they have over the way their life turns out, from the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. It observes the felt capacity to act, not action. The table prints the mean to one decimal and no top-box share, so the row stores the mean and ties are common. Fieldwork years differ by up to six years: the 37 countries emitted were surveyed between 2017 (eight, the US among them) and 2023 (India), and every value is stamped with the release year 2022. Response style on 10-point scales differs across cultures, and a closed autocracy can read high: Vietnam and Nicaragua sit near the top of the frame. Countries with separate EVS and WVS samples (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D127 and A15.

Conditions, not scored

Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2024
17.1 % of population, rank 123 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
72.7 % aged 15+, rank 66 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2025
19.2 % of GDP, rank 101 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

33.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Few procedures but very low formal business density shows the formal channel is not used. Marketeers and artisanal miners are survival activity that rarely becomes an organisation, so I do not follow panelist B.
45.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Registered density misses marketeers, smallholders and artisanal miners, who are most of the workforce. C's point that few procedures did not raise formal entry shows the formal channel is not the main route, which supports my reading, but I take five points off for the absence of any perception item.
34.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Few procedures, yet registered density is very low, so rules are not the constraint. Panelist B's informal activity argument is plausible but is survival, and perceived control is missing.

Coordination

How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

Government effectiveness

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Regulatory quality

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.

Logistics performance

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataindex 1-5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.

Border compliance time to export

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datahours
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY trade efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost of border compliance, now reported by firms. See D23.

Trade compliance efficiency

missing

Raw value: no datascore 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.IT.P3)
History: no data

Note: Observable throughput of several agencies acting together at the border: the third pillar of B-READY international trade, which replaces border compliance time to export (D167). It is a score, not hours, and it adds imports, compliance cost and goods ordered online. The World Bank reads it from firm surveys, where Doing Business asked experts about one standard shipment. The series note also names participation in digital trade and perceived obstacles to trade; the 2023 scoring table weighed only time and cost, and the revised weights were not read. B-READY covered 74 of 125 countries in the 2025 round.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Budget execution fidelity
Distance between primary government expenditure and the original approved budget.
Measured in percentage points from approved budget; lower is better. Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 111.197percentage points from approved budget
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Budget execution fidelity
Distance between primary government expenditure and the original approved budget.
Measured in percentage points from approved budget; lower is better. Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
History

University-industry collaboration

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Innovation Index
History: no data

Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Civil society strength
Autonomy, density and participatory reach of civil society organisations.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.918index 0-1
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Civil society strength
Autonomy, density and participatory reach of civil society organisations.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
History: one year

Public-private collaboration

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.

Behavioral check, not scored

Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.

Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2025
1.598 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.

Evidence for missing indicators

Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.

Zambialinked to Public-private collaborationstarted 2003dismantled
Zambia Railways concession to Railway Systems of Zambia, and its cancellation in 2012
Zambia concessioned its national railway, after a decade in which traffic halved from 1,072 million net ton kilometres in 1993 to 540 million in 1999, to the private operator Railway Systems of Zambia, which took over on 3 December 2003 and raised traffic by about 30 percent in net ton kilometres in 2004 against 2003; the World Bank later reported that the network and service kept deteriorating and that the concession was cancelled in September 2012.
30 %, increase in rail freight traffic (net ton kilometres) in the first year of the concession, 2004 against 2003, 2004. 3.7 million US dollars, concession fees paid to government by the concessionaire since takeover, per the concessionaire's auditors, 2005 (third quarter). World Bank, Implementation Completion Report, Zambia Railways Restructuring Project, Report No. 32520, December 2005, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: After two decades of falling traffic under the state railway, the government retrenched staff with World Bank money and let one private consortium run all freight and passenger services and the track under a vertically integrated concession; the operator lengthened hauls and paid fees for a few years, then a later government judged the network was still deteriorating and took the railway back.
Limits: The cited completion report was written two years into the concession and supports the start and the early gains only; it says the 30 percent rise came with a fall in tonnage as the operator dropped short hauls, and that the borrower disputed the concessionaire's fee compliance and Parliament set up a review in December 2005. The cancellation rests on a second World Bank document, the Country Partnership Strategy for FY13 to FY16 (Report No. 75089-ZM, February 2013, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/182591468178437607/pdf/750890CORRIGEN0IC00IDA0R20130002703.pdf, PDF page 22, paragraph 49), which says the rail network condition and service continued to deteriorate and the concession was cancelled in September 2012 with a commitment to recapitalise the railway, and elsewhere (page 11) calls it a reversal of the railway concession that stakeholders saw as policy incoherence. Neither document gives traffic for the later concession years, so the record shows a delivered early gain and a cancellation, not a measured decline from a peak. Both documents come from the lender that financed the concession process and argued for privatisation. The figures are in PDFs (the 1993 and 1999 traffic on page 5, the fees on page 10, the 2004 traffic gain on page 19, the 20-year term on page 43). The concession was originally 20 years with possible extensions (Annex 10), so it ran about nine years of a 20-year term, a figure computed here.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

50.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Civil society is strong and the 2021 transfer of power was orderly. An 11 point budget overrun and the slow debt restructuring show weak state coordination, so I hold.
52.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Civil society is strong after the 2021 opening, but budget overrun of 11 points and the long debt restructuring show weak state coordination. I take three points off toward A and C.
50.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Civil society participation is among the highest in the frame, a behavioural signal. An 11 point budget deviation, a slow debt restructuring and weak cross-ministry delivery mean the 84.7 overstates it.

Trust

How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

Rule of law

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Control of corruption

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.

Time to enforce a contract

retired, see notes

Raw value: no datadays
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-17 (D167). Doing Business stopped in 2019 and the World Bank archived the code. B-READY dispute resolution efficiency carries the construct, the time and cost to resolve a commercial dispute and enforce the decision. See D23.

Dispute resolution efficiency

missing

Raw value: no datascore 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (IC.BRE.DR.P3)
History: no data

Note: Confidence in contracts, measured as court throughput rather than opinion: the third pillar of B-READY dispute resolution, which replaces time to enforce a contract (D167). It is a score, not days, and it adds cost, the reliability of the process and the recognition of a decision. B-READY covered 74 of 125 countries in the 2025 round.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Bribery incidence
Firms asked for at least one bribe payment across six public transactions covering utilities, permits, licences and taxes.
Measured in % of firms; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 6.133% of firms
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Bribery incidence
Firms asked for at least one bribe payment across six public transactions covering utilities, permits, licences and taxes.
Measured in % of firms; lower is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Government compliance with the courts
How often the government complies with important decisions of the ordinary and specialised courts that it disagrees with.
Measured in scale 0-4 (never to always); higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 2.565scale 0-4 (never to always)
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Government compliance with the courts
How often the government complies with important decisions of the ordinary and specialised courts that it disagrees with.
Measured in scale 0-4 (never to always); higher is better. Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
History: one year

Intentional homicide rate

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataper 100,000 people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
History: no data

Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.

Generalised interpersonal trust

missing

Raw value: no data% agreeing
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
History: no data

Note: Share answering that most people can be trusted in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. The adapter uses the publisher-weighted country results, emits only countries with one survey row, and holds countries with separate EVS and WVS samples until the respondent-level weights can be pooled reproducibly. See D57 and D64.

Trust in public institutions

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% expressing confidence
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD Trust Survey / WVS
History: no data

Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.

Cooperation beyond the in-group

missing

Raw value: no data% expressing trust
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
History: no data

Note: The distinction that makes this dimension worth measuring: whether trust reaches a person with no tie to the respondent. Generalised trust asks about "most people", which a respondent can fill with their own circle; this item names the stranger. China is the clearest case, high on most people and low on a person met for the first time. The value is the publisher-weighted share answering trust completely plus the share answering trust somewhat, the one sum of two printed columns the adapter stores, exact to about 0.1, over all respondents including don't know and no answer. EVS and WVS ask the same question on the same four-point scale; where one country has both samples, the WVS share is a median 2.2 points higher. Trust in people of another nationality (G007_36_B), which the row once also named, is left out because it reads attitudes to foreigners as much as trust. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D140.

Court case clearance rate

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of incoming cases
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
History: no data

Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

47.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Low bribery and moderate court compliance support a middle reading, and alternation in power counts. No interpersonal trust data and recent court politicisation keep me slightly below the others.
48.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Low bribery and fair court compliance support a moderate reading, and peaceful power transfers show cooperation across groups. With no interpersonal trust survey the 77 is too confident, so I hold below it.
47.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.30
Low bribery and fair court compliance are favourable, and alternation in power is telling. With no interpersonal trust data, 77 is too confident.

Learning

How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Human Capital Index
Expected productivity of a child born today relative to full health and complete education.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.397index 0-1
Year: 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Human Capital Index
Expected productivity of a child born today relative to full health and complete education.
Measured in index 0-1; higher is better. Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
History

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Firms offering formal training
Share of firms that provide formal training to permanent employees.
Measured in % of firms; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 25.951% of firms
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Firms offering formal training
Share of firms that provide formal training to permanent employees.
Measured in % of firms; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
History

Adult learning participation

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
History: no data

Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Research citation impact
Share of a country's articles and reviews that are in the top 10% most cited for their subfield and year, as a ratio to the same share across all country-affiliated works.
Measured in ratio to world average; higher is better. Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 1.15ratio to world average
Year: 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Research citation impact
Share of a country's articles and reviews that are in the top 10% most cited for their subfield and year, as a ratio to the same share across all country-affiliated works.
Measured in ratio to world average; higher is better. Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
History: one year

Conditions, not scored

Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2012
4 % gross, rank 120 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2023
4.1 % of GDP, rank 64 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 1994
4.5 % of secondary, rank 94 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
The value is from 1994, more than 15 years old.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.

Evidence for missing indicators

Zambialinked to Adult learning participationstarted 1998still operating
TEVET Fund training for MSMEs and the informal sector
Zambia's TEVET Fund, set up under the TEVET Act and financed mainly by the Skills Development Levy, paid 101 training institutions to train micro, small and medium enterprise operators, informal sector workers and out-of-school youth, and enrolled 10,270 trainees in 2025 against a target of 9,350; its employer-based in-service window trained 1,188 employees against a target of 8,602.
10,270 trainees, trainees enrolled under the tevet fund msme and informal sector training window, 2025. 1,188 employees, employees trained under the tevet fund employer-based in-service training window, 2025. Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training Authority (TEVETA), Zambia, TEVET Fund Annual Report 2025, sections 4.2.1 and 4.3.2, retrieved 2026-10-17.
How it worked: Parliament created a training fund in the TEVET Act, the revenue authority collects a payroll skills levy for it, and the training authority's board signs competitive contracts with registered public and private institutions to train informal operators and employees in priority sectors.
Limits: The gap asks for a share of adults in education and training, and this is a count of trainees the fund paid for, reported by the authority that runs the fund, read from a PDF. Against an adult population of more than ten million, about 10,000 trainees a year is a fraction of one percent. The report gives no age breakdown, and it names out-of-school youth among the trainees, so an unknown part are young people in their first training rather than adults returning to learn. The report contradicts itself on the employer window: section 4.2.1 gives 1,188 employees trained, and the summary table of annual activities gives 2,557 employees. The 10,270 figure is an enrolment; 8,895 learners sat the assessment, against a different target of 9,674 in the same report. The report does not state the year the informal sector window opened; 1998 is the year of the TEVET Act that created the fund. The 2022 TEVETA annual report, a separate document, gives 8,297 enrolled in the same window that year. A count of trainees says nothing about course length, completion rates or effect on earnings.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

29.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
HCI is very low and the citation base is small and driven by international health partnerships. Firm training is decent, so I hold near round 1.
31.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
HCI is low and citation impact rests on a small, foreign-linked research base. Firm training at 26 percent is decent and informal skill transfer is uncounted.
28.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
HCI is among the lowest in the frame. Firm training is mid and citation impact rests on a small base, likely from international health collaborations.

Experimentation

How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?

-0.1 over 10 years, from 1.1 in 2016 to 1.0 on 3 indicators seen in both years.

+0.7 over 20 years, from 0.3 in 2006 to 1.0 on 3 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident patent applications
Patent applications filed by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 18per million people
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident patent applications
Patent applications filed by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident trademark applications
Direct trademark applications by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 1003per million people
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident trademark applications
Direct trademark applications by residents, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident industrial design applications
Industrial design applications filed by residents at their national office, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 71per million people
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Resident industrial design applications
Industrial design applications filed by residents at their national office, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New public software repositories
Growth over one year in the public GitHub repositories located in the country, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 27966per million people
Year: 2026. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New public software repositories
Growth over one year in the public GitHub repositories located in the country, per million people.
Measured in per million people; higher is better. Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
History: no data

Venture deals

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD / national VC associations
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.

Early-stage entrepreneurial activity

missing

Raw value: no data% aged 18-64
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
History: no data

Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.

Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure

missing

Raw value: no data% not deterred
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
History: no data

Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.

Firms through regulatory sandboxes

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no datafirms per million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: national regulators
History: no data

Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.

University spinouts

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataper million people
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: national TTO associations
History: no data

Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.

Business share of R&D

retired, see notes

Raw value: no data% of R&D
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD MSTI / RICYT
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.

Evidence for missing indicators

Zambialinked to Firms through regulatory sandboxesstarted 2021delivered and closed
Regulatory Sandbox Framework for Capital Markets, first cohort
Zambia's Securities and Exchange Commission admitted four innovations to the first cohort of its capital markets sandbox, with testing starting on 19 November 2021, and announced on 15 July 2024 that live testing had been completed and directed all four to suspend operations inside the sandbox pending evaluation and exit.
4 innovations, innovations admitted to the first sandbox cohort and completing live testing, 2024-07-15. Securities and Exchange Commission of Zambia, Press Release 'Regulatory Sandbox Framework for Capital Markets' (15 July 2024), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The securities regulator admitted a single cohort of capital markets innovations, let them take real investors under parameters and caps, then froze onboarding at the end of testing so it could evaluate each before deciding on commercial deployment.
Limits: The regulator reports on itself in a one-page press release (PDF). The four are named innovations from four firms (Kukula Capital, Lupiya Circle, Lusaka Securities Exchange and Premier Credit Zambia), one of them the national stock exchange. The release says the framework was issued on 18 December 2022 but that testing began on 'Wednesday, 19th November 2021', which cannot both be right, and neither date matches its weekday (19 November 2021 was a Friday, 18 December 2022 a Sunday); the start year 2021 is the earliest date the release gives and is not confirmed by any other source read. Completion of testing is not a successful exit: the release says each innovator will or will not be permitted to deploy commercially after review, and no outcome statement was found on the SEC site; its list of sandbox participants page is empty. If the 2021 date is right, testing ran over two and a half years for one cohort of four, and no second cohort was found. The Bank of Zambia runs a separate sandbox and reports that 'one financial innovation exited the Sandbox after a successful test' in 2024 (Annual Report 2024, printed page 69, PDF page 86, https://www.boz.zm/sites/default/files/2026-01/Bank_of_Zambia_2024_Annual_Report.pdf); summed, the two regulators show about five firms through a sandbox over three years for 21 million people.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

6.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Every formal row is near the floor. Mobile money adoption is real but rests on telecom firms rather than a setting that rewards trying, so I hold just above the floor.
12.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
Mobile money uptake and smallholder crop switching are trying that registers miss. A and C are right that nothing supports trying systematically, so I take three points off.
7.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
All filings and repositories sit near the floor. Mobile money use is real trying but I cannot verify it here, so I stay just above the floor.

Adaptability

How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?

No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Unemployment rate
Unemployed as a share of the labour force, modelled ILO estimate.
Measured in % of labour force; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 5.918% of labour force
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Unemployment rate
Unemployed as a share of the labour force, modelled ILO estimate.
Measured in % of labour force; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Long-term unemployment share
Unemployed for 12 months or more, as a share of total unemployment.
Measured in % of unemployed; lower is better. Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 63.7% of unemployed
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Long-term unemployment share
Unemployed for 12 months or more, as a share of total unemployment.
Measured in % of unemployed; lower is better. Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
History: one year

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Export diversification
Concentration of the merchandise export basket across products: the normalised Herfindahl-Hirschman index over SITC Rev.3 3-digit lines, 0 when exports are spread evenly and 1 when one product is everything.
Measured in index 0-1, lower = more diversified; lower is better. Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.683index 0-1, lower = more diversified
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Export diversification
Concentration of the merchandise export basket across products: the normalised Herfindahl-Hirschman index over SITC Rev.3 3-digit lines, 0 when exports are spread evenly and 1 when one product is everything.
Measured in index 0-1, lower = more diversified; lower is better. Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
History: one year

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New export products
Share of the products a country did not export competitively in 2009-2011 that it exported competitively in 2022-2024.
Measured in % of products not exported competitively at the start; higher is better. Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ)), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 2.57% of products not exported competitively at the start
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
New export products
Share of the products a country did not export competitively in 2009-2011 that it exported competitively in 2022-2024.
Measured in % of products not exported competitively at the start; higher is better. Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ)), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
History: one year

Disaster preparedness and recovery

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: INFORM / UNDRR
History: no data

Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.

Institutional responsiveness

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no dataindex 0-100
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.

Conditions, not scored

Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
62.2 % aged 15+, rank 98 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
0.79 per 100 people, rank 105 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2024
19.2 % of output, rank 102 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT), 2024
82.7 % of employment, rank 76 of 102. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).

Evidence for missing indicators

Zambialinked to Disaster preparedness and recoverystarted 2024delivered and closed
Drought Emergency Cash Transfer through the Social Cash Transfer
After the President declared the 2024 El Niño drought a national disaster, Zambia's Ministry of Community Development and Social Services enumerated households in all 116 districts within four to eight weeks. From May 2024 to April 2025 it paid a drought emergency cash transfer to 1,631,007 households in 84 districts through the Social Cash Transfer, and paid a nationally funded price-shock transfer to 632,664 households in the other 32 districts.
1,631,007 households, households supported by the drought emergency cash transfer (d-ect) in 84 drought-affected districts, May 2024 to April 2025. 632,664 households, households paid the government-funded indirect price shock emergency cash transfer in the remaining 32 districts, May 2024 to April 2025. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report, Zambia Scaling-up Shock Responsive Social Protection Project (P179095), retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Once the drought was declared, the Cabinet chose the existing Social Cash Transfer instead of a parallel humanitarian pipeline to deliver emergency aid. The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services then used enumerators already on retainer in every district and a simplified proxy-means test to enrol drought-hit households in weeks and pay them through the same digital rails.
Limits: The source is the World Bank's own completion report on a project it financed, written with the implementing ministry, and the household counts are programme administrative data, not an independent survey. The 1.63 million drought transfers were financed by IDA grants and a donor trust fund. Only the 632,664 price-shock transfers were paid from national funds, so the record shows government delivery capacity more than government financing. Payment timeliness fell to 17 percent in the first half of 2025, at the height of the drought, and averaged 29 percent over the project against a 90 percent target. Households counted as supported were not necessarily paid on time. The consumption and coping effects the report cites come from evaluations it says should be interpreted cautiously. The report's own footnote 51 puts enumeration at about eight weeks, against four weeks in the main text. The report dates the disaster declaration to 28 February 2024 in one place and 29 February in another. The record shows a response after a shock was declared. It does not show forecasting or contingent financing in place before the drought, and the report says the government began strengthening disaster risk financing, with contingent financing instruments, only from 2024, after the drought. The transfer ended in April 2025 and the caseload returned to its pre-drought level, so nothing here shows recovery outcomes.
Zambialinked to Institutional responsivenessstarted 2020delivered and closed
COVID-19 Emergency Cash Transfer through the Social Cash Transfer
Zambia's Ministry of Community Development and Social Services answered the COVID-19 pandemic by extending the Social Cash Transfer, paying 400 kwacha a month to about 204,000 households in 25 urban and peri-urban districts from September 2020 to August 2021, and for the first time adding households from outside the programme's caseload.
204,000 households, households paid the covid-19 emergency cash transfer (c-ect), about, September 2020 to August 2021. 194 days, days from the first confirmed coronavirus case to the first c-ect transfer, 2020. UNICEF Zambia, Zambia's Emergency Cash Transfer Programmes D-ECT and C-ECT: Process Evaluation (June 2022), retrieved 2026-10-16.
How it worked: The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services used the Social Cash Transfer's caseload, district staff and payment contracts as the channel for a pandemic transfer, topping up existing beneficiaries and registering new categories of households, such as female-headed households with children, alongside them.
Limits: Both numbers sit in a PDF: the household count on printed page 28 (PDF page 30) and the 194 days in the executive summary (PDF page 13). The evaluation was commissioned and funded by UNICEF Zambia, which also channelled the money, so the programme is partly reporting on itself. The 204,000 is a rounded figure with 116,000 of the households already enrolled in the Social Cash Transfer; the final caseload the evaluation reports for the UNICEF-managed share is 141,579 households in 19 districts, of which 41,581 were newly registered, so most of the response was a top-up to an existing list. The money came from the UN COVID-19 appeal, US$21.6 million from the EU, KfW, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, not from the treasury, and the evaluation says donors had suspended direct funding to the ministry after the Auditor General reported mismanagement of Social Cash Transfer funds. The evaluation rates the speed below the global average for COVID-19 social protection responses: the first transfer came 194 days after the first case and 166 days after the first localised lockdown. It also finds the programme's information system inadequate for emergency processing and records registration delays. The 204,000 is against an estimated more than 1 million households made vulnerable by the pandemic in 43 districts.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

31.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Copper concentration is severe, new export products are few and long-term unemployment is high. Household solar during load-shedding is self-provision, so I hold.
33.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Copper dependence and a high long-term unemployment share show weak system reallocation. Households and firms moved to solar during the 2024 load-shedding, which is a distributed response.
28.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Copper dependence is extreme and new export products are few. Low unemployment reflects informality. Household solar in 2024 is a distributed response but the hydro dependence was slow to address.

Building

How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?

-10.6 over 10 years, from 19.3 in 2016 to 8.7 on 3 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Manufacturing value added
Manufacturing value added as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 8.749% of GDP
Year: 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Manufacturing value added
Manufacturing value added as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
High-technology exports
High-technology exports as a share of manufactured exports.
Measured in % of manufactured exports; higher is better. Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 1.472% of manufactured exports
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
High-technology exports
High-technology exports as a share of manufactured exports.
Measured in % of manufactured exports; higher is better. Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
History

Logistics infrastructure quality

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataindex 1-5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.

direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Electricity connection speed
Doing Business score for the days a business waits for a permanent electricity connection.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 56.957score 0-100
Year: 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: direct capability measureMeasures the thing itself.
Electricity connection speed
Doing Business score for the days a business waits for a permanent electricity connection.
Measured in score 0-100; higher is better. Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Economic fitness
Diversity and ubiquity-adjusted sophistication of the export basket.
Measured in index; higher is better. Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 0.034index
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Economic fitness
Diversity and ubiquity-adjusted sophistication of the export basket.
Measured in index; higher is better. Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
History

Large project delivery

no dataset exists, 1 record

Raw value: no data% overrun
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: none
History: no data

Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.

Firm scale-up rate

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of firms
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: OECD DynEmp
History: no data

Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.

Conditions, not scored

Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
10,880 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 109 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).

Evidence for missing indicators

Zambialinked to Large project deliverystarted 2016operating below its peak
Solar powered milling plants contract, and its erosion
Zambia's government contracted Shandong Dejian Group for a fixed-price US$200 million national programme of solar powered milling plants, financed in 2016 and due 24 months after the March 2016 deposit. The Auditor General found it still incomplete at 31 March 2022, 38 months after the scheduled completion date, and found 555 of the completed plants non-functional at audit in January 2024.
555 plants, solar powered milling plants found non-functional at audit, January 2024. 1,583 units, units contracted (1,553 solar powered milling plants plus 30 solar powered rice mills), 2016. Office of the Auditor General of Zambia, Special Audit Report of the Auditor General on Public Debt for the period 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2022, section 7.6.4, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: The Ministry of Finance borrowed from China Development Bank to buy a turnkey national programme of off-grid milling plants from one Chinese contractor, and appointed the Zambia Co-operative Federation to run them through local co-operatives. No public body was funded to maintain the equipment, so delivery slipped for years and a third of the completed plants stopped working.
Limits: The Auditor General never publishes the peak number of working plants. The secondMetric is the contracted count, not the peak installed or working count. The 555 non-functional plants are counted among the 1,553 milling plants, about 36 percent; that share is our inference. The audit inspected selected sites, so the 555 figure may rest partly on progress reports rather than visits to every plant. The report is internally inconsistent: the loan paragraph describes 1,000 plants for US$200 million, while the finding counts 1,583 contracted units. It also dates the deposit (March 2016) before the China Development Bank loan (July 2016). The section gives no final cost and no completion date, so neither a cost overrun nor a final schedule overrun can be computed. 38 months is the delay at 31 March 2022 against the revised January 2019 date; against the original 6 March 2018 date it is about 49 months. The plants are distributed small units rather than a single structure, which makes the record a weaker fit for major public infrastructure. The Zambia Co-operative Federation, the implementing agent, is a federation and not a ministry. The audit also found K15.5 million in lease fees that were never paid into the Treasury. Nothing here shows how many households used the mills, or whether the non-functional plants were later repaired.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

19.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Manufacturing is small and economic fitness near zero. The 2010s road programme delivered at high cost and drove the default, which is weak delivery capacity; I hold.
22.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.50
Manufacturing and fitness are weak and electricity connection is middling. A's point that the debt-financed road push cost more than it delivered moves me three points down.
16.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Manufacturing is small and fitness is near zero. The debt-financed roads cost a default and the 2024 hydropower failure was a delivery gap. Electricity connection speed is the only favourable direct row.

Shared Purpose

To what extent can people imagine themselves as participants in a common project?

+13.9 over 10 years, from 22.8 in 2016 to 36.7 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

+11.7 over 20 years, from 25.0 in 2006 to 36.7 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

-0.5 over 30 years, from 37.2 in 1996 to 36.7 on 2 indicators seen in both years.

Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.

Voice and accountability

retired, see notes

Raw value: no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: World Bank (GOV_WGI_VA.EST)
History: no data

Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Artefact A5: it measures the democratic channel while Shared Purpose asks whether people can see themselves in a common project. Singapore scored 20.9 while being one of the most effective collective actors in the set. Volunteering and civic participation are the observable replacements and are declared gaps; voter turnout is published beside Shared Purpose as a check, because it reads the same democratic channel and compulsory voting (D129). See D23 and A5.

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Tax revenue
Central government tax revenue as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 18.83% of GDP
Year: 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Tax revenue
Central government tax revenue as a share of GDP.
Measured in % of GDP; higher is better. Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS)
History

downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Income inequality
Gini index of disposable income.
Measured in Gini 0-100; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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observed

Raw value: 51.5Gini 0-100
Year: 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
Normalized: downstream outcomeMeasures a result that usually follows from the capability.
Income inequality
Gini index of disposable income.
Measured in Gini 0-100; lower is better. Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI), also in the indicator registry. Each flag is a country at its normalized position from 0 to 100, where higher always means better. The bar in the list below shows the same position.
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Source: World Bank (SI.POV.GINI)
History

Sense of national belonging

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% expressing belonging
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (G006)
History: no data

Note: A declared gap again since 2026-10-02 (D151, which supersedes the retirement in D143). The project still wants to know whether people count themselves members of the community whose common project this capability asks about, so the row stays even though no series can fill it. The only cross-national item aimed at it, national pride (G006) in the Joint EVS/WVS, is not wired: pride is not belonging, and it fails the regime test of artefact A13, with electoral autocracies at 75 percent very proud against 47 in liberal democracies. ISSP 2023 asks about closeness to the country in 16 countries. Wireable on an item that reads the same in every regime class, or on a behaviour of belonging, for half the frame or more. High national pride must never be read as the capacity for collective action.

Volunteering

no dataset exists

Raw value: no data% of adults
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Gallup World Poll / CAF
History: no data

Note: CAF publishes country figures but the underlying Gallup microdata is proprietary, so it fails the inspectability rule.

Political polarisation

no dataset exists

Raw value: no dataindex 0-4
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: V-Dem
History: no data

Note: V-Dem political polarization (v2cacamps) is published beside this dimension as a behavioral check and is not scored, because a regime with no organized opposition reads as calm (D121, A13). The gap stays open for a measure that can tell calm between competing camps from calm where no camp may compete. Pluralism is the target, so only hostile polarization should count against a country.

Civic participation

missing

Raw value: no data% mentioning
Year: no data
Normalized: no data
Source: Joint EVS/WVS (A080_01)
History: no data

Note: A reported behaviour: the publisher-weighted share of respondents mentioning membership of a humanitarian or charitable organisation, the membership item closest to acting for strangers, in the official Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 results table, release 5.0.0. Religious membership is left out because it reads religiosity, and a count of any membership is not published in the aggregate table. The two programmes ask differently: EVS shows a list and asks which the respondent belongs to, WVS reads each type aloud and asks about active or inactive membership, and the joint file counts both kinds of WVS member as mentioned. Where one country has both samples, the WVS share is higher in eight of ten, so part of the spread is question format. Membership is not activity. China reads 2.7% and Vietnam 9.4%, so state mass organisations do not inflate this item. Fieldwork runs from 2017 to 2023 and every value carries the release year 2022. Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are held, as for interpersonal trust. See D128 and A15.

Behavioral check, not scored

Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.

Political polarizationV-Dem (v2cacamps_osp), 2025
2.13 index 0-4, lower is better. Whether supporters of opposing political camps generally meet in a friendly or a hostile manner, rated by V-Dem country experts from 0, friendly, to 4, hostile.
The question counts hostility and leaves disagreement alone, which is what pluralism asks for. It is not scored because a low reading has two causes the number cannot tell apart. Where camps compete openly, a calm reading means people who disagree still meet as fellow citizens. Where no opposition may organize, it means there is no camp left to be hostile to. In 2025 the five closed autocracies in the frame average 2.18 and the liberal democracies 1.67, while electoral democracies and electoral autocracies sit near 2.8 and 3.3. Scored, the reading would have lifted the United Arab Emirates about 11 points on this capability for a uniformity the benchmark does not count as shared purpose. Income is not why it is left out: richer countries read only somewhat calmer, at about -0.41 against log GDP per capita.
Voter turnoutV-Dem (v2eltrnout), 2021
70.61 % of registered voters, higher is better. Share of registered voters who cast a vote in the latest national election up to 2025, according to official results, as coded by V-Dem from IDEA, IPU and IFES sources. Where executive and legislative elections fall on the same day, the executive turnout is coded.
Turnout is the one act in which a whole population takes part in a common decision, so it is the closest behavioral reading of shared purpose the benchmark has. It is not scored for three reasons the number cannot separate. It reads the democratic channel, which is why voice and accountability was retired from this capability (A5): a country with no competitive elections cannot score well for reasons unrelated to whether its people see themselves in a common project. Compulsory voting turns it into a reading of the law: Brazil enforces it, and the eight countries that enforce sanctions average 83 percent against 65 where voting is voluntary. And closed and electoral autocracies manage it: Vietnam reads 95.6, Rwanda 98.2 and Singapore 92.8, which is mobilization, not participation (A13). The year shown is the latest national election, because elections are coded only in the year they happen.

Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works

42.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Three peaceful handovers between competing parties are productive pluralism through institutions, and panelist B is right to weight them. High inequality holds it below the middle, so I move up two points.
44.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Three peaceful handovers between competing parties and low ethnic conflict are productive pluralism the indicators miss. High inequality pulls it down, so I take two points off.
40.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.30
Repeated peaceful transfers between competing parties show productive pluralism. High inequality and a missing civic participation row hold it down.

🇿🇲Zambia

Government foresight capacity

Long-horizon research commitments

Time to start a business

Business entry efficiency

Adults doing digital tasks

Perceived control over life

Government effectiveness

Regulatory quality

Logistics performance

Border compliance time to export

Trade compliance efficiency

University-industry collaboration

Public-private collaboration

Rule of law

Control of corruption

Time to enforce a contract

Dispute resolution efficiency

Intentional homicide rate

Generalised interpersonal trust

Trust in public institutions

Cooperation beyond the in-group

Court case clearance rate

Adult learning participation

Venture deals

Early-stage entrepreneurial activity

Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure

Firms through regulatory sandboxes

University spinouts

Business share of R&D

Disaster preparedness and recovery

Institutional responsiveness

Logistics infrastructure quality

Large project delivery

Firm scale-up rate

Voice and accountability

Sense of national belonging

Volunteering

Political polarisation

Civic participation

Zambia