Sustainable Human Development Composite Index (SHDI) in Africa: Using Factor Analysis Techniques

Development has witnessed a major changes in its concept and measurements, since 1990 The UNDP has adopted the concept of Human Development and proposed a new composite index known as HDI. The new index has many defaces; it ignores many dimensions of development like: Justice, freedom, and equality. This study seeks to treat the issues in HDI by proposing a new measurement for human development in Africa. Firstly, the study shows some of the most popular indices of development (its components and defaces) such as: HDI, HPI, and IHDI. Then it introduces the methodology of building the new index (SHDI); it consists of 5 steps: defining the theoretical framework of human development and its 5 dimensions: (Economic, Environment, Demographic, Educational, Political), defining sub-indicators that measures every dimension of human development, rescaling the values of sub-indicators to can integrate them, defining the relative weights of each indicator that represents its contribution in human development using Factor Analysis technique, and integrate the sub-indicators of all dimension to build the SHDI in Africa and study the spatial differences in Human Development between all countries. This study finds that North Africa Region has the highest value in SHDI, and East and Central Africa region has the lowest value in SHDI. Finally, the study recommends to form a scientific groups to build a variety of human development in different communities Keywords: Sustainable Development, Human Development, Composite Index, Factor Analysis, Africa.