Ethiopia ranked 1st in Africa and 11th worldwide for improving human development since 1970

Human Development Index (HDI). A composite measure of achievements

in three basic dimensions of human development—a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. For ease of comparability the average value of achievements in these three dimensions is put on a scale of 0 to 1, where greater is better, and these indicators are aggregated using geometric means.

The top HDI movers (countries that have made the greatest progress in improving the

HDI) include well known income “growth miracles” such as China, Indonesia and South

Korea. But they include others—such as Nepal, Oman and Tunisia—where progress in the

nonincome dimensions of human development has been equally remarkable (table 1). It is striking that the top 10 list contains several countries not typically described as top performers.

And Ethiopia comes in 11th, with three other Sub-Saharan African countries (Botswana,

Benin and Burkina Faso) in the top 25.

To read the complete  2010 Human Development report click here. To read the summary of the report click here.