UN Report Shows Real Economic Parameters Rising in Africa

Dec. 16, 2019 (EIRNS)—The UN Development Program has released its decennial “Human Development Report 2019,” which shows African countries making a healthy rise in physical economic parameters. Global in scope, the 300-page report purports to “go beyond” the simple income statistics, and including life expectancy and education years in the equation. It has been doing this since 1990.

To get a sense of the report’s perspective, for example, the top 50 ratings are primarily Western European countries, owing to high per-capita income and life expectancy. Looking at the BRICS countries: Brazil registers 79 on their scale; Russia 49; India 129 (due to a low “mean years of schooling”); China 85; and South Africa 113. The U.S. rates 15, right behind the U.K., with Japan and South Korea slightly down the list.

While African countries in general compose the majority of the Low Human Development segment of the rankings, the island nation of Seychelles has for the first time broken into the “Very High” segment, coming in at number 62. Four countries, Botswana, Gabon, Mauritius and South Africa are now rated “High,” and another 12 African countries—Angola, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—are in the “Medium” category.

A primary focus of the report is “inequalities” between rich and poor, which they describe as motivating “the wave of demonstrations” now sweeping the globe.