Over the last decade many African economies have posted world beating growth rates mainly on the back of a commodity-led boom, but a new report shows that the Africa rising narative did little to improve the prosperity of people living on the continent.

The report by London-based think-tank Legatum Institute ranks African countries according to both wealth and wellbeing, which it calls “prosperity”.

It defines prosperity according to a combination of 89 variables spanning eight categories, from entrepreneurship to health and education.

Overall the Legatum index showed that Africans are less healthy, less educated and less able to participate in economic activity despite the recent increase in gross domestic product in their economies, Financial Times reported.

“The 2016 Africa Report sought to determine what level of prosperity African countries can and should be expected to deliver given their level of wealth. This was done by assessing their level of wealth (GDP per capita), and modeling it against their score in the Prosperity Index,” said Augustine Chipungu, Research Analyst -at the Legatum Institute.

The new index revealed which countries in sub-Saharan Africa have over and under achieved in creating more prosperous societies given their level of wealth.

Most of the countries that over-achieved on the index had relatively low level of wealth yet created a ‘Prosperity Surplus’ by offering their citizen wider social-economic benefits such as civil liberties, strong judiciary and a diverse economy.

Rwanda, which has less than a third of oil-producing Angola’s wealth, was more successful in creating a prosperous country, according to the report.

Only 10 countries made the list of high ranking prosperity, 18 were in the middle ranking and 10 in the low ranking, bottomed by the Central African Republic.

The first 10 most prosperous African countries according to the index included South Africa, Botswana, Morocco, Namibia, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Rwanda, Ghana
and Burkina Faso.

The report also compared Africa against other regions including Asia.

“The African continent has made no relative progress on prosperity,” the report says, contrasting its performance with east Asia, where governments have done a better job of transforming raw GDP growth into improved living standards.

The report also finds that Africa has done far less well than east Asia at reducing poverty.