Ethiopian Informer
ADDIS ABABA: December 12 (EI) – Ethiopia’s Human Development Index (HDI) is still below the low human development category albeit the East African country’s HDI registering a 65.8 percent increase between 2000 and 2018, a new report published by the UN Development Program (UNDP) revealed.
The 2019 UNDP Human Development Report, which was launched under the theme “Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century,” here on late Tuesday ranked the East African country at 173rd out of the 189 countries and territories assessed in terms of human development.
The report, noting Ethiopia’s HDI value increased from 0.283 to 0.470 between 2000 and 2018 that marks an increase of 65.8 percent, however, categorized Ethiopia’s HDI value for the year 2018 at 0.470, putting the country in the “low human development category.”
According to the report, Ethiopia – Africa’s second populous nation with more than 105 million total population according to the World Bank – was also ranked 123rd out of 162 countries in its Gender Inequality Index, with only 37.3 percent of parliamentary seats held by women.
UNDP Resident Representative in Ethiopia, Turhan Saleh, also said during the launching event in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa “despite the improvement, Ethiopia is still below the average for low human development countries and for Sub-Saharan Africa. So we have room to catch up as it still needs to keep up even with its neighbors.”
“When you take a comprehensive measure of human development, Ethiopia has improved quite a lot because it made some good policy choices and investment in health, education and water and sanitation,” Saleh added.
The HDI is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development that are “a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.”
The report measures “long and healthy life” in terms of life expectancy, knowledge level is also measured by years of schooling among the adult population as an average number of years of schooling received in a life-time by people aged 25 years and older, while standard of living is measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita expressed in constant 2011 international dollars converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion rates, it was noted.
