The hidden development patterns of Africa and their sustainability correlations

Abstract

With steady population growth and formidable development issues, understanding Africa is crucial for reaching global sustainability. Through policy support, societies have embraced indicators and their composite indices as tools to create benchmark initiatives, assess current conditions, and help set future development targets. Responding, a paralyzing amount of these metrics are now available for decision-makers, practitioners, and researchers to choose from causing difficulties during their applied use. Further, the number of underlying development dimensions essential for capturing all aspects of sustainability remains undetermined. Building upon other continental studies, this research first condensed and described a set of 44 multi-metric sustainability indices across 52 African nations. A factor analysis uncovered 11 significant sustainable development dimensions (factors) that conveyed over 79% of the total variation of the original 44 indices. Next, the 11 latent dimensions were combined (aggregated) into a mega-index of sustainable development (MISD). Lastly, Ward's cluster analysis was used to create country-bundles of similarity from the 11 factors. The four strongest hidden dimensions expressed: (F1) human well-being synergies; (F2) governance and liberty; (F3) economic stability; (F4) happiness and innovation. The human well-being synergies dimension (F1) explained over one-third of the total variance, and had greatest improved conditions in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. MISD ranked Namibia best, then Ghana, Gabon, Kenya, and Zambia; Seychelles ranked worst, then Eritrea, Burundi, Comoros, and Mauritania. Cluster analysis revealed a six-bundle solution. This cross-country analysis spotlights the underrepresentation of planetary boundaries within existing development indices. Lastly, favorable development dimensions were rarely found spatially concordant.