Kenya Ranked Happiest Country in East Africa, 121st Globally

Kenya has been ranked in position 121 out of 156 countries in the latest global happiness report released on Friday.

Kenya’s happiness index stands at 4.583 out of the possible 10, according to the United Nations’ 8th World Happiness Report.

For the third year in a row, Finland was named the happiest nation in the world with a score of 7.809. Denmark is second with an index of 7.646 followed by Switzerland (7.560), Iceland (7.504) and Norway (7.488).

Others are the Netherlands (7.449), Sweden (7.353), New Zealand (7.300), Austria (7.294), Luxembourg (7.238), Canada (7.232), and Australia (7.223).

The United States is ranked at position 18 with a score of 6.940, the United Kingdom is 13th with an index of 7.165, Germany ranks 17th with a score of 7.076 while Italy is 30th with an index of 6.387.

“The top countries tend to have high values for most of the key variables that have been found to support well-being, including income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity,” the reports reads.

Libya, which is ranked in position 80 globally with a score of 5.489, is the happiest country in Africa followed Ivory Coast at position 85, Benin (86), Congo (88), Ghana (91), Morocco (97) and Cameroon (98). South Africa is 109th with a score of 4.814.

“The biggest gainer was Benin, up 1.64 points and moving from the bottom of the ranking to near the middle,” said the UN.

In East Africa, Kenya ranks as the happiest nation ahead of Uganda (126), Burundi (140), Tanzania (148), Rwanda (150) and South Sudan (152).

GDP per capita, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, the extent of generosity, and freedom from corruption are the parameters the UN used to rank 156 countries.