What does the rebasing mean for the Nigerian people? And specifically, what strategies have the Nigerian government employed in order to pass on the benefits of economic growth to its citizens? Deloitte explore the relevance of using economic indicators in measuring social development and assess Nigeria’s performance
What does the rebasing mean for the Nigerian people? And specifically, what strategies have the Nigerian government employed in order to pass on the benefits of economic growth to its citizens? Deloitte explore the relevance of using economic indicators in measuring social development and assess Nigeria’s performance, utilising the newly created Social Progress Index (SPI), in addressing its social challenges.
In light of the challenges in utilising conventional economic indicators to assess social progress, the use of alternative indicators has become increasingly popular. The Africa Competitiveness Report, the Corruption
Index, the Ease of Doing Business Report and Deloitte’s own-PESTLE model are to name a few that attempt to holistically assess countries performance relative to each other.
Of these, the latest to join the basket of indicators is the Social Progress Index (SPI), supported by Michael Porter from the Harvard Business School in collaboration with the Social Progress Imperative, and it has gained significant popularity and success in measuring and monitoring countries performance against social objectives. The Index provides for a robust measurement of social progress based on integral components necessary for a country’s sustainable development and includes results from publically available data and surveys.
The SPI comprises three dimensions necessary for social progress, which combined comprises the index:
- Basic human needs, which measures a country’s nutrition and basic medical care, sanitation and water, shelter and personal safety;
- Foundations of well-being, which measure literacy, education, health and wellness, access to information and ecosystem sustainability;
- Opportunity, which measures citizens’ access to personal and political rights.
The Index is intended to look “beyond GDP” and identifies the social and environmental components a country requires to perform. When the SPI is applied to Nigeria, results show there is still significant room for improvement.
The Nigeria 20:2020 vision aims to improve Nigeria’s SPI score. The vision details specific plans upon which the government intends to improve:
- Nutrition and basic medical care, access to basic knowledge and improving personal freedom;
- Access to information and communication; and lastly
- Nigeria’s ecosystem and sanitation.