Malawi's human development index on the rise-UN report

Malawi’s human development index has slightly improved over the previous years to 170 out of 188 countries and territories, a new UN report said.

The annual report by the United Nations indicates that between 1990 and 2015, Malawi’s human development index value increased from 0.325 to 0.476, an increase of 46.4 percent.

The Human development index is based on a composite index of life expectancy, education and income of a country’s general population.

Its life expectancy at birth stood at 63.9 years an increase by 20.1 years, and the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita $1,073 decreased by about 27.2 percent between 1990 and 2015, the report said.

Malawi’s 2015 HDI of 0.476 is below the average of 0.497 for countries in the low human development group and below the average of 0.523 for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

From Sub-Saharan Africa, countries which are close to Malawi in 2015 ranking and to some extent in population size are Mali and Zambia, which took positions 175 and 139 respectively.