Living a long life is one thing. Living a long life once you actually reach retirement age is another, and it’s this second measure, remaining life expectancy at age 65, that really shows which countries let seniors enjoy the most years after leaving working life behind. The global ranking is dominated by a tight cluster of countries in East Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean basin. No sovereign African country appears on it, but the continent isn’t entirely absent from the picture, and the gaps it reveals within its own borders say a great deal about uneven health development.
At the top of this ranking sit Hong Kong (23.2 years remaining at 65), Japan (22.5 years) and Réunion (22.2 years), followed by France (22.0 years), Singapore (21.9 years), Australia, Spain, Switzerland, French Polynesia, Canada, Andorra, Martinique, Malta, South Korea, Italy, Sweden, Guernsey, Portugal, Israel, Iceland, Norway, Macau, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which closes out this top 25 with 19.6 years.
What stands out in this ranking is Réunion’s third place worldwide. This French territory in the Indian Ocean, located just off Madagascar, is African by geography in the strictest sense. Its performance, driven by a healthcare system built on French standards and universal social coverage, contrasts sharply with the rest of the continent, and it shows just how much access to a strong healthcare and social protection system matters more than geography alone.
Looking at life expectancy at birth, a more widely available indicator than life expectancy at 65 for most African countries, Tunisia leads the continent with 77.1 years, closely followed by Algeria (76.9 years), then Cabo Verde (76.6 years), Morocco (75.9 years), Mauritius (75.4 years), Libya (75.2 years), the Seychelles (73.3 years) and Egypt (72.2 years). North African countries and small Indian Ocean island nations clearly dominate this continental sub ranking, helped by greater socioeconomic stability and meaningful progress in access to healthcare.
At the other end of the spectrum, the gap is striking. Chad (55.6 years) and Nigeria (55.0 years) sit at the bottom, nearly 22 years behind Tunisia, one of the widest demographic divides found on a single continent. That gap reflects very different trajectories in medical infrastructure, nutrition and general living conditions, far more than simple climate or geographic differences.
Beyond longevity itself, another point stands out. The major international indicators of retirement length, such as those regularly published by the OECD, which show for instance that French women spend close to 27 years in retirement and French men around 23 years, almost never cover African countries. That’s no accident. Across much of the continent, formal pension coverage remains minimal, the informal economy dominates the labour market, and a large share of older people keep working simply because they lack a sufficient pension or any retirement system to draw on. In other words, even in African countries where life expectancy is rising, the real question isn’t only how many years are left after 65, but how many of those years can actually be lived without having to work.
This overview confirms a well documented trend: longevity after retirement remains concentrated in high income countries with mature healthcare and social protection systems. Africa, despite real progress in North Africa and in certain island states, remains structurally behind on this specific measure, not so much because of raw life expectancy, which is rising almost everywhere on the continent, but because of the lack of pension systems able to turn those extra years of life into years genuinely freed from work.