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After DUBAWA’s fact-check, a Facebook account, Comedic Memes, deleted a post that ranked Nigeria as number one in a list of what it claims are the most educated countries in Africa.
Social media platforms, especially Facebook, have been filled with viral claims, ranking some countries as Africa’s most educated. These rankings have sparked counteropinions and diverse comments from other users.
One of such ratings was shared by Comedic Memes, with Nigeria ranked first, followed by several other African countries. The post had generated significant engagement and sarcastic comments from other Facebook users.
DUBAWA’s findings revealed that, based on educational metrics such as literacy rates and the Human Development Index (HDI), reputable international organisations consistently rate Seychelles as a top performer among African countries.
We checked the World Population Review’s Literacy Rate by Country 2025. We discovered that the Seychelles has the highest literacy rate at 95.9% among African countries, followed by Equatorial Guinea (95.3%), South Africa (95%), São Tomé and Principe (94.8%), Namibia (92.3%), and Mauritius (92.2%), among others. Similar ratings can also be found on Data Pandas and The African Exponent.
The 2023 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) also ranked Seychelles with the highest score of 0.848 points, followed by Mauritius (0.806), South Africa (0.741), Gabon (0.733), and Nigeria (0.560).
A few days after publishing the fact-check, we checked for Comedic Memes’s account, where the list is posted, and discovered that the post had been deleted and the account could no longer be found.
