Ghana human development down

... Africa's quality of life plummeted
Ghana is ranked 131 in the latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI), down from last year's 128 said a UN report released on Thursday (website)

The report, which ranks 177 UN member states according to their level of human development, places Ghana in the "medium human development" category.

The Human Development Index is based on per-capita income, educational level, healthcare and life expectancy.

Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands were ranked as the best five countries to live in, but Africa's quality of life plummeted because of AIDS. In the report, the US was in eighth place, a drop of one position from 2003. The industrialized nations as usual were in the top 20. At the bottom of the list for the seventh year was Sierra Leone.

Ghana is grouped with South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Kenya as countries with the poorest income redistribution rate in Africa, though they fair better than most Latin American countries.

Ghana is number 46 on the Human Poverty Index of 95 developing countries.

According to the report, life expectancy at birth in Ghana in 2002, the measuring year, was 57.8 compared to 80 years in Sweden and 69.5 years in Algeria, the best endowed country in terms of human development on the continent.

The adult literacy rate was 73.8% of ages 15 and above, and the school enrolment rate was 46%.

Ghana's drop on the HDI was a "slight worsening, not a terrible worsening" because the latest index included two more countries, and some countries had better data.

UNDP predicts that sub-Saharan African will not achieve most of the Millennium development goals (MDGs) that include halving poverty by 2015 because all human development indicators show a declining trend.

"Other regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, are performing much less well. At the current pace sub-Saharan Africa will not meet the goal for universal primary education until 2129," says the report.

The report says the region would not achieve the goal of reducing child mortality by two-thirds until 2106, a 100 years gap, rather than the 11 years called for by the United Nations.

This year the Human Development Report focuses on the roles cultural liberty and diversity play on development and warns that struggles over identity, if left unmanaged, or managed poorly, can quickly become one of the greatest sources of instability within states and between them, and could trigger conflict that takes development backwards.