Best friends take a selfie on their phone.

Kenya is a happier country in 2023, climbing up the rankings to position 111 from position 119 in 2022 in the World Happiness Report, a publication of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network. With this leap, it has surpassed Uganda (113) as Eastern Africa’s happiest country.

The report also indicates that global average life evaluations in the last three years (2020–2022), with rankings based on the Gallup World Poll, have been resilient despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Global benevolence remains 25 percent higher than it was pre-pandemic.

Finland is, for the sixth year running, the happiest country in the world. Snuggled next to the Nordic country are European neighbors which have been a mainstay in the top 10 since the report was launched ten years ago. The ten happiest nations are Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and New Zealand.

The happiest African country is Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. It has been ranked 59th.

An improved Kenya, however, ranks worse in the list of the happiness gap between the top (happier) and bottom (sadder, or less happy) halves of the population, at 118th. A higher ranking means lower happiness inequality.

Afghanistan and Netherlands, and then dominant Finland, make the podium with the smallest gaps in happiness between the happier and sadder halves of their populations.