Kenya has been ranked the 27th unhappiest country in a new global happiness report.
Kenya ranks 119th out of 146 countries in the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s 2022 World Happiness Report.
Kenyan respondents cited perceived government corruption as the main source of their dissatisfaction, according to the report.
This is a slight decrease from last year’s happiness index, which ranked the country 121st out of 149 countries.
Kenya was ranked 23rd in Africa, behind Uganda, which led the East African Community (EAC) and was ranked 117th worldwide.
Tanzania is ranked 139th out of 146 countries, while Ethiopia is ranked 131st.
Rwanda is the most unhappy country in the EAC, according to the study, coming at the bottom 4 on the global index, just before Zimbabwe, Lebanon and Afghanistan.
Mauritius, the happiest country on the continent, was ranked number 52 in the world, followed by Libya, Ivory Coast, South Africa, and Gambia.
Finland, for the fifth year in a row, was named the happiest country in the world, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Established in 2012, The World Happiness Report is based on people’s own assessment of their happiness, as well as economic and social data.
It assigns a happiness score on a scale of zero to 10, based on an average of data over a three-year period.
For this year’s study, the authors stated that they also included data from social media to compare people’s emotions before and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
They reported “strong increases in anxiety and sadness” in 18 countries, as well as a drop in feelings of anger.
