Not much progress for Sierra Leone’s Human Development: Looking at the real numbers

Another index has been released and yet again the people of Sierra Leone are being told that tremendous progress has been made based on mere table position. Similar declarations were made when the corruption perception index report was released. These indices are meant to guide us on how much progress we are making. We as a country must look beyond our place on the table and look at the real numbers because they tell the true story about our progress. Regrettably however, a lot of media houses in Sierra Leone have joined the misinformation band wagon and have led the gullible public to believe that a few notches upwards on the HDI table means we have made tremendous progress. Additionally, the must mischievous of some of these media houses are the newspapers operated by government operatives. For them, I am not sure whether it is ignorance or mere deceit when it comes to these issues. Sometimes, one is inclined to believe that it is just propaganda but the complexity of the interpretation of the HDI suggests that in this case they have no clue what they are talking about. This article will attempt an elucidation of Sierra Leone’s scores on the HDI. At the end of the article readers would hopefully see that we as a country have made very little progress if at all and for the APC newspapers to claim this as progress when even Haiti has achieved more is despicable.

Going behind the numbers

The HDI this year recalculated 30 years worth of data to give us a handle on what progress if any we may have made. A quick look at Sierra Leone’s numbers, a true patriot would not help but feel sad for the abysmal performance of the country. For the past thirty years, Sierra Leone has consistently been below the African regional average of the HDI.  In fact most if not all the indicators show decline. Let’s take government expenditure on health. In 2005 the SLPP government spent 1.9% of the country’s GDP on health while the APC government has reduced that spending to only 1.4% of the GDP in 2010 according to World Bank figures. Although figures on school enrolment have not declined, the APC government has not been able to increase enrollment levels in schools. According to the very Human Development Report being misinterpreted by the government and pro-government newspapers, school enrollment increased only during the reign of the SLPP government. Enrolment in schools was about 28% in 1980, 29% in 1990. It was in 2000 during the government of Ahmed Tejan Kabbah that enrollment increased from the dismal 29% to 44.6% close to 100% percent increase. Since then, there is no evidence that the APC government has increased school enrollment. One of the reasons for the massive increase in enrollment during SLPP rule was the free education given to the girl child. That program has since been scrapped by the APC government. Based on the evidence, it will be foolhardy for anyone to celebrate 158 placement on the HDI table when the real numbers actually show no improvement. Sierra Leone may have improved in its standing not because of real improvement in human development but because other countries have been performing very poorly. Some of these countries are war torn.

In addition to that, the economy has declined from about 7% growth during the days of SLPP to a meager 3% during the APC government. Inflation has increased from single digits of 8% under the SLPP to a whopping 17 percent under APC. This means the cost of living is more than 100% higher than it was during SLPP days…to say it in our lingua franca, tin tranga; yesterday betteh pass tiday

The human development trend

The human development trend is nothing to write home about either. The only real growth in human development happened between 2000 and 2005 when the SLPP controlled government. Beyond that the performance of the APC government is negligible and no sane person who can half understand these numbers would celebrate such performance. That the APC government can celebrate such dismal performance suggests that we are setting such a low standard for our human development that we should be ashamed of ourselves. The celebration of the position of 158 is akin to celebrating a student who scored 35% in his end of year exam but placed 5^th position in the class. This attitude is what one Sierra Leone forumite quoting George Bush calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. Sierra Leone deserves and can do better than that.

By Anonymous

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!

---

© 2010, https:. All rights reserved.