Benin

Sources

• SIPRI Military Expenditure Database

  The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database contains consistent time series on the military spending of countries for the period 1949-2020.

  Website

• Global Militarization Index

  With its Global Militarization Index (GMI), BICC is able to objectively depict worldwide militarization for the first time. The GMI compares, for example, a country’s military expenditure with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its health expenditure. It relates the number of military and paramilitary forces in a country with the number of physicians and the overall population. Finally, it studies the number of heavy weapons available to a country’s armed forces in relation to the overall population.

  Website

• World Bank: External Debt

  The World Bank publishes external debt data for each country and defines it as follows: “Total external debt is debt owed to nonresidents repayable in foreign currency, goods, or services. Total external debt is the sum of public, publicly guaranteed, and private nonguaranteed long-term debt, use of IMF credit, and short-term debt.”

  Website

• IMF: Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

  The International Monetary Fund publishes data on the gross domestic product for every country worldwide. The GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services – that is, those that are bought by the final user – produced in a country in a given period of time (say a quarter or a year). It counts all of the output generated within the border of a country. GDP is composed of goods and services produced for sale in the market and also includes some nonmarket production, such as defense or education services provided by the government.

  Website

• Least Developed Countries (LDC)

  The United Nations (UN) offers a list of Least Developed Countries. The Least Developed Countries represent the poorest and weakest segment of the international community. The category of LDCs was officially established in 1971 by the UN General Assembly with a view to attracting special international support for this group of countries. Areas for actions to be implemented by LDCs and their development partners will focus on eight interlinked priority areas: productive capacity, agriculture, food security and rural development, trade, commodities, human and social development, multiple crises and other emerging challenges, mobilizing financial resources for development and capacity-building and also good governance at all levels.

• World Bank: ODA as percentage of GNI

  The World Bank defines ODA as percentage of GNI like this: “Net official development assistance (ODA) consists of disbursements of loans made on concessional terms (net of repayments of principal) and grants by official agencies of the members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), by multilateral institutions, and by non-DAC countries to promote economic development and welfare in countries and territories in the DAC list of ODA recipients. It includes loans with a grant element of at least 25 percent (calculated at a rate of discount of 10 percent).” In this case it’s shown as share of the gross national income (GNI).

  Website

• Bertelsmann Transformation Index

  The Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) analyzes and evaluates the quality of democracy, market economy and political management in developing and transition countries. It measures successes and setbacks on the path toward a democracy based on the rule of law and a socially responsible market economy. The Governance Index, part of the BTI, ranks the countries according to their leadership’s political management performance by examining and evaluating decision-makers’ reform policies. Successful transformation management implies that governments are consistent in pursuing their goals and use their resources wisely and effectively. It also implies that decision-makers cultivate the broadest possible consensus for their transformation goals and work reliably with external supporters and neighboring states.

  Website

• Global Competitive Index

  The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) was introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2005. Defining competitiveness as a set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country, GCI scores are calculated by drawing together country-level data covering 12 categories – the pillars of competitiveness – that collectively make up a comprehensive picture of a country’s competitiveness. The 12 pillars are: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation.

  Website

• Human Development Index (HDI)

  The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated by the United Nations Human Development Programme (UNDP) and provides data for 186 UN member countries. The human development index (HDI) records the average values of a country in basic areas of human development. These include, for example, life expectancy at birth, the level of education and per capita income. A ranking is calculated from a large number of such individual indicators. It allows to draw conclusions on the state of average development of a country.

  • 0.800 - 0.999 = High Human Development
  • 0.500 - 0.799 = Medium Human Development
  • 0.100 - 0.499 = Low Human Development

  Website