Are some countries' civil aviation authorities safer than others?
Lets take the EU for example. In the EU, there are 230 banned air carriers. The majority of these (228) are banned because the EU CAA has determined that the country in which these carriers operate do not have enough oversight to ensure the safe operation, regulation, and maintenance of the airlines.

Two of the air carriers are banned specifically because of poor maintenance standards, obsolete aircraft, or other reasons.

Similarly the US has the International Aviation Safety Assessment although a much shorter list because it really only evaluates airlines that are codeshare or operated by companies that serve flights to/from the US. For the EU, this is a larger list because it does not require crossing an ocean to get there...

Typically you'll find on these lists quite a few airlines that operate out of developing countries like the Congo or Angola. Its reasonable to draw the conclusion that countries that do not have regulatory oversight for much outside of running the government itself leaves the standards of safety to the operators themselves.

This isn't to say that the operators are automatically unsafe, they just lack government regulation and observation of safety standards. 

So to mirror what vortaq7 said in his comment above, quantifying this is going to be difficult since the types of operations vary highly between countries. For example the US has a high accident rate looking at pure fatalities over the last 25 years compared to any other country, but this is because the US is biggest aviation market.

Looking at it in the context of incidents per million flight hours may be available, but it also groups a lot of different types of flights like cargo and commuter. I'm sure this type of data is available for more developed countries with reporting systems and formal accident investigations but may be difficult for countries that don't have that.



And now for a personal note... I know you're not interested in the personal aspect but Angola's air carriers are banned in the EU, so it gives a little credibility to what I say above, plus its a good story. :)

A part of my job is travelling the world and being flown out to oil rigs for work on the automation and safety systems. About 8 or 9 years ago I had to fly out to Luanda, Angola to be flown out to a rig a few hours off the Angolan coast. The flight there (and back) was on the Houston Express, a direct flight from Houston to Angola.

Upon arrival at the Luanda airport, I was taken to the heli-terminal for the flight out to the rig. Now understand that in the US Gulf of Mexico people travelling by helicopter to an oil rig are required to have egress training. In the EU, travelling out into the North Sea also must include cold water survival. In Luanda however, there were zero requirements (I know this because I did not have egress training, nor was I asked to prove I did).

After 3 or 4 equipment delays we were finally boarded on the helicopter, I sat across from the flight engineer and 3 or 4 other rig hands were on board. After take-off and after we flew over the coast, here is pretty much the actual words I spoke:


  ME->Flight Engineer: What is dripping on the back of my neck? Smells like fuel.
  FE->ME: It is fuel.
  ME->FE: Should I be concerned?
  FE->ME: Only if it stops dripping, that means we are out of fuel.


Be sure I spent the remainder of the flight studying very carefully how to pop out the egress window...

When we got back to Luanda the aircraft we were supposed to take back to Houston had "mechanical problems" which delayed my return by 3 days. I could see the aircraft on the tarmac and it was sitting on cinder blocks without any tires, literally like you would imagine leaving a nice car in a bad neighborhood overnight. I spent those 3 days in a compound run by the oil company that had 16 foot tall walls with barbed wire and a very hefty front gate.