Nigeria at the weekend retained its 2014 ranking of 152nd on the 2016 Human Development Index (HDI) report for Africa released by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP in Nairobi, Kenya.
Nigeria’s HDI value for 2014, according to UNDP’s 2015 report was 0.514 which put the country in the low human development category position of 152nd out of 188 countries and territories.
In the latest ranking, the country was still placed on Low Human Development (LHD) category, below High Human Development (HHD) and Medium Human Development (MHD) categories, which featured 53 countries in Africa.
Mauritius led 63 countries on the HHD table, while Tunisia came last at 96 position on the Group average rating.
Botswana came first on the MHD at 106th position, while São Tomé and Príncipe came last at 143rd position.
Kenya, which hosted the Toyoko International Conference on African Development (TICAD), where UNDP announced the report at a press conference, was placed at 145th position on the list of countries ranked low with Niger Republic taking the last position at 188th.
Kenya’s average annual HDI between 2010 and 2014 was 0.92 percent, outperforming Nigeria whose annual HDI within the same period was placed at 1.06.
The HDI is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development, a long and health life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.
The UNDP has disclosed that sub-Saharan Africa was losing the average of $95 billion a year due to gender inequality.
It said the situation escalated in 2014 when the region lost $105 billion or six percent of the region’s GDP.