10.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
FSI
score: 103.8 
When the Associated Press calls a nation "desperately poor" despite rich mineral deposits, adding that "armed bandits and insurgents roam the anarchic countryside"; when the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office recommends visitors avoid "non-essential" travel to most parts of the country's territory, and the Lonely Planet calls it the "real" Africa because it's so "underdeveloped, fragmented and poverty-stricken"; and when a Danish journalist can buy himself an ambassadorship to the country and uses it to satirize the absurd corruption that rends it -- well, it sadly wasn't a good year for progress in the Central African Republic.
Above, a woman walks in the rebel-held town of Kaga Bandoro in the country's north.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
