The UN 2016 Human Development Index, released in March 2017, reveals very similar results for Africa compared to the 2015 version we reviewed last year. In general, the indices change little from year to year, as is to be expected with such broad national indicators (indeed any sharp jump from one year to the next should be cause for skepticism and investigation). Most of the comments we made in our 2015 review apply to this year's results. 22 out of the bottom 25 places are occupied by African countries, a slight improvement from last year when it was 24 out of 25. This year, Rwanda and Senegal just escape the bottom 25, replaced by non-African Haiti and Yemen. The same nine sub-Saharan countries, Botswana, Gabon, South Africa, Cape Verde, Namibia, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia and Ghana appear in the Medium Human Development category, and they are joined by a tenth, Kenya. Botswana and Gabon are just a whisker away from the next highest category, High Human Development.

Of the fifteen West African nations, thirteen are in the low HDI category. Eleven of these countries, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin and Togo are included in the bottom 25 nations.

The HDI is an apparently sensitive measure of a country's human development, with changes of the order of .1% measurable (.001 out of a maximum of 1). The change in HDI from one year to the next reveals the amount of progress a country has made in developing its human potential. For the 15 West African countries, their absolute score and change in score from 2015 to 2016 is indicated below.

	2016 HDI	Change in HDI from 2015
Cape Verde	0.648	+0.002
Ghana	0.579	0

	2016 HDI	Change in HDI from 2015
Nigeria	0.527	+0.013
Senegal	0.494	+0.028
Togo	0.487	+0.003
Benin	0.485	+0.005
Cote d'Ivoire	0.474	+0.012
Gambia	0.452	+0.011
Mali	0.442	+0.023
Liberia	0.427	-0.003
Guinea-Bissau	0.424	+0.004
Sierra Leone	0.420	+0.007
Guinea	0.414	+0.003
Burkina Faso	0.402	0
Niger	0.353	+0.005

The UN separates the nations in its list into four categories: Very High HDI (scores from .800 upwards), High HDI (from .700 to .799), Medium HDI (from .550 to .699) and Low HDI (below .550). Norway (0.949), Australia (0.939) and Switzerland (0.939) occupied the top three positions, as they did last year. Singapore, which we profiled on its fiftieth independence anniversary, improved seven positions from its 2015 ranking to occupy fourth position with an HDI of 0.925, an increase of .013.