Ethiopia ranks 175 out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index

Ethiopia ranked 175th out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) 2021/22, placing it in a low human development category.

The HDI which is a composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development, that is, a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living, ranked Ethiopia 175th overall. According to the report published this week, in 2021 the average value that Ethiopia had on the human development index was 0.498. Furthermore, Ethiopia had 65 years of life expectancy at birth on average while 9.7 was the expected years of schooling or 3.2 mean years of schooling. In 2021, the country’s gross national income per capital was set on 2,361.

According to the report, the human development measured the nation’s health, education, and average income which had declined for two years in a row, from 2020 to 2021, reversing five years of progress. This is in line with the global decline, indicated that human development across the world had stalled for the first time in 32 years. Recent declines on the HDI are widespread, with over 90 percent of countries enduring a decline in 2020 or 2021.

Almost all countries saw reversals in human development in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, and most low, medium and high HDI countries saw continued declines in the second year. The last two years have had a devastating impact on billions of people worldwide when crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine hit back-to-back and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts and dangerous planetary changes. The latest Human Development Report - Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World – which was launched by UNDP argues that layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways.

The COVID-19 pandemic, beyond its damage to people’s health and mental well-being, has also devastated economies and exacerbated gender inequality. For instance, gender inequality witnessed a near-global rise – to which the world suffered a 6.7 percent increase. South Asian economies like Bangladesh and Bhutan bucked the trend and registered an improvement. The report also suggests that stress, sadness, anger, and worry have been increasing over the last decade, now reaching record levels. On average, countries spend less than 2 percent of their healthcare budgets on mental health, which limits access to mental health services for citizens globally. Uncertainty, inequality, and insecurity go hand in hand with polarization and lack of trust. Polarization and mistrust t shrink our capacity for social dialogue and stifle collective action, the report read. Globally, less than 30 percent of people think most people can be trusted, which is the lowest recorded value. The world as seen is not transitioning to a postcovid-19 build-back-better scenario. On the contrary, developing countries in every region are entering a sharply divergent social, political, and economic period with especially sharp downside risks for the most vulnerable and regression in gender equality.

“The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises. We have seen with the cost of living and energy crises that, while it is tempting to focus on quick fixes like subsidizing fossil fuels, immediate relief tactics are delaying the long-term systemic changes we must make,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, adding, “We are collectively paralyzed in making these changes. In a world defined by uncertainty, we need a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle our interconnected, common challenges.”