Egypt is in 97th position on the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index and is now among countries considered to have high human development, according to the UNDP’s latest Human Development Report (HDR) entitled “Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World” that was launched last Thursday.

The index measures life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling, mean years of schooling, and gross national income (GDI) per capita, among other things. Egypt’s figures on these measures were 70.2, 13.8, 9.6, and 11.732, respectively.

The country has moved up 13 places in the ranking of this year’s index in a survey of 191 countries.

Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala Al-Said said that this progress was a clear reflection of the development plans implemented by the government over recent years and a natural result of what has been achieved through national projects and presidential initiatives in fields including health and education.

She said that Egypt’s improved ranking in the index was due to its improved performance on indicators on the dimensions of knowledge, the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of quality education, and a decent standard of living, the eighth SDG of economic growth and decent work.

The annual average growth of the index on Egypt was estimated at 0.73 per cent during 2010 to 2021, an increase over the previous ten years (2000-2010) of 0.64 per cent.

Karim Adel, an economist, said that the UNDP report looked at accurate and detailed data on comprehensive development efforts in all aspects of life in Egypt. The report noted progress in Egypt’s performance on many levels, including improvements in the health and education systems, he said.

The new ranking came amid a decrease in the ranking of 90 per cent of the world’s countries on the index between 2020 and 2021, with more than 40 per cent declining in both years.

The report said that 59 per cent of countries with low or medium human development, including many in Africa, had recorded a decline in their performance on the index between 2020 and 2021.

Niger, Chad, and South Sudan are the three African countries with the lowest positions on the index.

The UNDP report warns that unprecedented crises during the last two years have had a devastating impact for billions of people around the world, adding that health, education and living standards have fallen five years behind as a result of Covid-19, with the situation being prone to deterioration as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

“Layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways,” the report said, adding that crises like the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine had hit back-to-back and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and massive increases in polarisation.

Overall, world human development has declined for two years in a row for the first time in the 32 years that the UNDP has been calculating it. “Human development has fallen back to its 2016 levels, reversing much of the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” the report said.

It described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “window on a new reality” and called the development of effective vaccines a huge achievement credited with saving nearly 20 million lives. People are living with a new “uncertainty complex”, it said, and warnings of the possibility of future epidemics formed a general atmosphere of uncertainty.

“Even before Covid-19 hit, we were seeing the twin paradoxes of progress with insecurity and polarisation,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator. Today, with one-third of people worldwide feeling stressed and less than a third of people trusting others, the world faces major roadblocks to adopting policies that work for people and planet.

To chart a new course, the report recommends implementing policies that focus on investment, from renewable energy to preparedness for pandemics, as well as social protection programmes to prepare societies for the ups and downs of an uncertain world.

“Innovation in its many forms, technological, economic, and cultural, can also build capacities to respond to whatever challenges come next,” the report said.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 15 September, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.