Africa continues to rank as the world’s unhappiest region, with a low average happiness score of 4.4 in the latest global report.
According to visualcapitalist.com, while several countries have seen strong economic progress in recent years, many areas still face high poverty rates, ongoing conflicts, political instability, and weak infrastructure, which negatively impact overall happiness levels.
This map showcases the findings for Afrian countries from the 2025 World Happiness Report, an annual publication that measures global contentment based on life evaluations, social support, freedom of choice, GDP per capita, and additional indicators of well-being. The data is drawn from the Gallup World Poll and various supplementary sources.
Each nation’s score in the World Happiness Report reflects an average of life evaluations over a three-year span (2022–2024 for this edition), ranking countries from highest to lowest. A more detailed explanation of the report’s methodology can be found at the end of this article.
The Most and Least Happy Countries in Africa 2025
Below, we show the happiness scores of African countries from the World Happiness Report 2025.
This year, West African coastal nation Sierra Leone surpassed Lesotho as the unhappiest country in Africa.
The country, one of Africa’s poorest nations, had the second-lowest happiness score in the world.
After its brutal civil war from 1991 to 2002, Sierra Leone continues to grapple with poverty, weak governance, and economic instability, contributing to its low happiness ranking.
Over on the eastern coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius surpassed Libya as Africa’s happiest country in 2025. The country is known to have a stable democracy, strong economy, and relatively higher quality of life.
It’s also the most peaceful country in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Global Peace Index.
African countries were also among those that saw the greatest changes in their happiness scores this year.
Lesotho recorded the biggest jump in happiness score, rising by 0.6 points from 3.2 to 3.8 this year. However, it still ranks among the least happy countries worldwide.
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone’s score dipped by 0.3, dropping from 3.3 in 2024 to 3.0 in 2025–one of the biggest drops in score from this year’s report.
