Data Insights: Exploring the Observance of Public Holidays Across Africa

Why We Looked Into This? »👀
Public holidays are declared in various countries for various reasons and some analysts think there are too many holidays that affect the economy. What country has the most number of holidays in a calendar year?

 

  • Madagascar and Uganda have the highest number of days (19) spent observing public holidays yearly. Along with Madagascar and Uganda, Senegal, Tanzania and Morocco all spend 5% of the calendar year observing public holidays.
  • Eritrea, Mauritania São Tomé & Príncipe and Sudan have the least number of days (8) observed as public holidays yearly.
  • Some African countries have multiple independent days – Cameroon, Libya, Western Sahara, Somalia have multiple days observed as independence days.
  • Some countries give 1 day for the observance of religious festivals while others give more than 1 day for the same religious festival. For example, Eid is 1 day in Uganda and South Sudan while in Egypt, it is more than a day. Likewise, while South Sudan observes Christmas Eve as a holiday, South Africa does not observe this day (Christmas Eve) as a holiday – South Africa has a ‘day of goodwill’ which is after Christmas.
  • Most African countries (10) spend 12 days in observance of public holidays.

 

Research Table: Public Holidays 

 

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