Human development ranking shows that the problem is deeper

 -do we applaud or back in despondency?  A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says that Tanzania has registered impressive progress in human development since 1990 though it still ranks among the low human developed countries. This is the summary for us of the HDI report, its index for 2019 launched at midweek, showing progress but at a low achievement level.

The report focuses not just on the specifics of the human development index but rather on inequalities. The reason for this is energetic campaigns and protests the world over which has characterized the past few months or nearly the whole year when the report was being researched and compiled. The report’s title,  ‘Beyond income, beyond average, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century’ shows that there is a wider problem, not just how far we have come in human development – health care for all, education for all or access to clean water for all, not to speak of usable and improved roads for all, etc. It is an issue of personal achievement and how this is shown in a satisfaction index.

The report puts Tanzania’s human development index (HDI) for 2018 at 0.528 or around half of what is desired, where we hear the position is shared with Uganda. For one thing, Tanzania has a bit of handicap on account of size of territory, thus infrastructure costs more here than in our East African Community partners; conversely there is also the benefit of having vaster natural resources, etc.

There has arguably been significant progress, as the report says that between 1990 and 2018, Tanzania’s HDI value increased from 0.373 to 0.528, an increase of 41.8 percent as life expectancy at birth increased by 14.8 years, mean years of schooling increased by 2.4 years and expected years of schooling increased by 2.5 years. Tanzania’s gross national income (GNI) per capita increased by about 88.2 percent between 1990 and 2018,  and if one takes up technology, ease of life has never been more explicit than at present.

Still there are clear gaps that defy even our imagination, as people wish to live the full breadth of their lives in dignity, not wallowing in unemployment and single meals per day. Trying to figure out how we shall achieve that milestone is hard, if nearly 30 years has reduced poverty to less than a third of the population, but a full third more or less lives on tenterhooks. If anything goes wrong, this portion of the population also falls into poverty – and there is little that the plans we have can do to address the shortcoming, of living without worry.

Tanzania’s 2018 HDI of 0.528 stood above the average of 0.507 for countries in the low human development group and below the average of 0.541 for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for instance. As we haven’t had the sort of ravages that have characterized other countries in Africa, this implies that our economic methods are relatively less achieving than elsewhere. Perhaps for that reason we should continue focusing on improving conditions of doing business, as only on that premise can a more dynamic economy be projected for the future. The social fabric ought to be shored up, by increasing opportunities.