Out of 189 countries globally and 46 sub-Saharan Countries, Ghana places 138th and 13th respectively in the new human development Index for 2020.

This new HDI score of 0.611 is an improvement in the 2019 index which saw the country place 142nd with a score of 0.596.

According to the report, Ghana was second to Cape Verde in the West African sub-region and also shared this same position with a southern African country, the Kingdom of Eswatini (Swaziland) whilst Seychelles ranked 1st among the 46 sub-Sahara African countries represented and 66th worldwide. Also, Niger ranked 189th with the lowest HDI value among all the countries represented.

For Ghana, this is a big push, considering the glaring difficulties the COVID-19 pandemic posed on education; the closure of schools and the ‘new normal’ online learning, etc. This means that, by and large, Ghana could have improved the more should there have been no COVID-19.

This notwithstanding, other countries in the sub-region with high scores regressed from their 2019 positions: Gabon fell by four places, South Africa by one, Libya by five, Tunisia by four.

Between 1990 and 2019 Ghana’s average annual HDI value growth was 0.95, increasing by 31.4 percent. Also, Ghana’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased by more than 120 percent throughout the period.

Other dimensions of the quality of the Human Development Index such as the level of inequality, multidimensional poverty and planetary pressures were considered. Between 2000 and 2018 the level of inequality in the country averaged 43.5. According to the report, overall income shares held by the richest 10% was 32.1 percent and 15.1 percent for the richest 1%.

On a gender basis, Ghana scored an overall Gender Development Index of 0.911, with an HDI value of 0.582 for females and 0.639 for males. Also, the estimated Gross national income per capita for females stood was $4,073 and $6,432 for males (at 2017 PPP $). The mean years of schooling for females was slightly below that of males by 1.5 (6.6 and 8.1 respectively).

Furthermore, the proportion of the female population (ages 25 and older) who had had at least some secondary education between 2015 and 2019 was 55.7 percent whereas the proportion of males was 71. 6 percent within the same period.

Quite interestingly, the proportion of females in the labour force who were actively working in 2019 was 63.3 percent as compared to 71.6 percent for the labour force participation rate of males. Only slightly lower than that of 2018 which recorded a participation rate of 63.6 percent and 71.5 percent for females and males respectively.

The Human Development Index is an average measure of basic human development achievement in a country. As a summary measure, it is used to assess long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development- living a healthy life, having an education, and a decent standard of living.

Due to the complexities that the world faces with planetary pressures from climate change and now, COVID-19, “the human development journey must be reimagined and the development approach leveraged to support transformational change.”