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UN ranks Nigeria high on SDGs performance

Per Second NewsJuly 18, 2023402

The United Nations (UN) has scored Nigeria high on its efforts and commitments toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

by the year 2030.

The UN 2023 SDGs report, ranked Nigeria among the top five African countries, and also in the top 31 countries globally, with 64.6 percent.

The report ranked the efforts of Nigeria towards achieving the SDGs ahead of countries like France at 64.1 percent, China 56.8 percent, United Kingdom 54.8 percent, South Africa 52.5 percent, Brazil 48.7 percent, India 47.5 percent, Russia 39.3 percent, Israel 36.1 percent, and the United States of America 28.6 percent.

Other African countries topping the chart globally are: Benin, which ranked 5th at 78.7 percent; Ghana ranked 24th at 69.1 percent; Egypt ranked 28th at 65.8 percent; and Senegal, ranked 30th at 65.3 percent.

“We assume that rich countries with high educational levels and good health and infrastructure systems would have greater access to capital to invest in SDG transformations.

“Yet government efforts for the SDGs in 2023 correlate only moderately to their 2015 SDG Index scores and per-capita GDP in 2015.

“Benin, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Senegal are just some of the countries that are performing much better on the SDG government effort measure than would be predicted from their baseline SDG Index levels and 2015 per-capita GDP.

“In contrast, a few countries with very high per-capita GDPs (US$50,000 and above) and SDG Index scores (75 percent and above), such as Australia and the United States, demonstrate only a limited commitment to the SDGs, with apparently limited efforts made,” the report stated.

According to the report, Nigeria is on track or maintaining SDG achievement in nine SDG sub-goals out of five of the 17 SDGs, including: zero hunger; good health and wellbeing; industry, innovation and infrastructure; life below water; and peace, justice and strong institutions.

The nine sub-goals are: Prevalence of wasting in children under 5 years of age; Human Trophic Level; New HIV infections (per 1,000 uninfected population); Age-standardised death rate due to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, or chronic respiratory disease in adults aged 30 to 70 years.

Others are population using the internet; Fish caught from overexploited or collapsed stocks; Fish caught by trawling or dredging; Fish caught that are then discarded; and Homicides (per 100,000 population).

The report noted that based on the pace of progress since 2015, none of the goals is on track to be achieved globally by 2030, with the 2020 pandemic greatly affecting progress.