Model for Estimating the Life Expectancy of West African Countries

In this research, the development of a model for estimating life expectancy of the West African countries and the analysis of factors influencing life expectancy of countries was addressed. Thereafter, the proposed model was optimised to confirm whether or not there could be a maximum or minimum life expectancy value. But the result of the model optimisation established that there is neither a maximum nor minimum life expectancy value. Which means that life expectancy of a nation could attain both low and higher value depending on the policies/efforts of the government of that nation. Likewise, the model predictions were contrasted with the online sourced data. And the validation outcome revealed that the absolute difference between the model predictions and the sourced data is very minimal. Equally, the correlation coefficient analysis showed a higher correlation with the real-life data sourced which indicated that the model is performing as expected and thus recommends it as a standard for measuring life expectancy of West African Countries. Moreover, as a recommendation confirmed by the model's variable sensitivity analysis. When targeting areas of life expectancy intervention projects, the income of every nation must be given priority, followed by the quality of health, unemployment rate and economic status of the nation. Lastly, with the proposed model research, it is possible to rank and predict the future life expectancy values of each of the West African countries. Keywords: Life expectancy, model development, standard of living, Country economic status, validation of the model, correlation coefficient, model optimisation, sensitivity analysis