South Sudan has witnessed historic flooding resource-based local conflict & regional locust invasion in addition to COVID-19 in 2020/UNDP

The United Nations Development Programme has released its annual Human Development report ranking South Sudan number 185 out of 189 countries.

South Sudan has only moved one-step forward after last year’s Report placed it at number 186 out of 189 countries.

This year’s report titled: “The next frontier, Human development and the Anthropocene” based its findings on life expectancy, education and gross domestic product per capita. 

This year is the 30th year where the UNDP produced Human Development Report globally that looks at three main things — life expectancy or health, education or literacy and Gross Domestic Per capita for income.

The composite is then calculated to produce the human development indicator for  a particular country.

“There are 198 countries in the report that are normally run for the human development report and for this year, South Sudan is 185 parlaying in terms of its course its human development index of 0.433 with the same parlay to that of Burundi,” said Fatmata Loveta Sesay, the Economics Advisor for UNDP in South Sudan.

“But then South Sudan is ahead of Chad, Niger and the Central African Republic.”

The sixteen-page report recommended that the government discourages depletion of the environment, set strong regulations and policies as well as multiple responses to manage natural wealth.

Retaining its top position, Norway posted an index value of 0.957 in 2019, followed by Switzerland with 0.955, as well as Iceland and Hong Kong with 0.949 each.

Niger, at 0.394, was at the bottom of the index rankings. It was followed by the Central African Republic with 0.397, Chad with 0.398, and South Sudan and Burundi, both with 0.433.

The report said the average index value stood at 0.898 for the very high human development group and 0.791 for countries in Europe and Central Asia.