Nigeria ranked 3rd best in English proficiency in Africa and 29th in the world

Nigerians are the third-best speakers of English in Africa, according to the latest report by a global private language tutor, Education First (EF).

The country was ranked number 29 in the world with South Africa being ranked number six globally.

The English Proficiency Index (EPI) by the Switzerland-based company ranks Kenya behind South Africa even though Nairobi still emerged as the highest placed African city.

Other African countries that appeared in the top 100 list included Ethiopia (63), Tunisia (65), Egypt (77), Cameroon (83), Sudan (87), Algeria (90), Ivory Coast (96) and Libya (100).

The top country in the world was the Netherlands followed by Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Singapore finishing the list of the top five.

Kenya had a high proficiency EF EPI score of 60.51 with Netherlands leading with 70.27%.

In terms of city's, Nairobi emerged top in Africa with an EPI score of 61.94% followed by Lagos which scored 58.47%.

Africa's average proficiency score dropped, primarily due to score changes in South Africa and Ethiopia and to the inclusion of Sudan and Cameroon, which both fall in the ''very low'' proficiency band, the report said.

The EF report links English proficiency to innovation, public investment in research and development, number of researchers per a population of one million as well as technicians per capita.

The scores are achieved through analysing results from 2.3 million adults who took an online English test in 2018 via EF Standard English Test, 100 countries participated.