The UN 2018 Human Development Report has recently been released, with results for 2017. The release appears overdue, as the 2016 Human Development Report, which we reviewed, came out in March, 2017, with results for 2015. We can not find a 2017 Human Development Report; it appears delays in production have prompted the UN to skip issuance of this. The report  reveals very similar results for Africa compared to the 2016 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 2016 review apply to this year's results. Almost the same 22 African countries appear in the bottom 25 places (Benin replaced by Comoros), joined as last time by Afghanistan, Yemen and Haiti. The highest climber in this bottom category was Guinea, which moved up nine places from sixth from bottom to fifteenth from bottom, with an increase of score from 0.414 to 0.459.  This was achieved largely by a reported increase in its GNI per capita from $1,058 in 2015 to $2,067 in 2017. If the HDRs are to be believed in this statistic, this is a remarkable accomplishment.

The UN sets the  threshold between Low- and Medium Human Development at 0.550. It is an important psychological barrier. This year Angola and Cameroon graduate into the Medium Human Development category, joining South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Cape Verde, Namibia, Congo, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya and Zambia. In line with our observation in our last report, Botswana and Gabon have graduated from this category into the High Human Development category (threshold 0.700) joining Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritius and Seychelles, with the latter two not being far from the highest category, Very High Human Development. The above-mentioned nineteen nations are the relative high performers in the African context. The rest, thirty-two in all, fall into the dreaded Low Human Development category.

As with our last report, of the fifteen West African nations, thirteen are in the Low Human Development category. Ten of these countries, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Gambia, Cote d'Ivoire and Togo are included in the bottom 25 nations. In this category, apart from Guinea, mentioned above, other prominent climbers were Benin (+0.030) and Guinea-Bissau(+0.031). Mali (-0.015) and Sierra Leone (-0.001) recorded a decline in their human development score.

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.

	2018 HDI	Change in HDI from 2016
Cape Verde	0.654	+0.006
Ghana	0.592	+0.013

	2018 HDI	Change in HDI from 2016
Nigeria	0.532	+0.005
Benin	0.515	+0.030
Senegal	0.505	+0.011
Togo	0.503	+0.016
Cote d'Ivoire	0.492	+0.018
Gambia	0.460	0.008
Guinea	0.459	+0.045
Guinea-Bissau	0.455	+0.031
Liberia	0.435	+0.008
Mali	0.427	-0.015
Burkina Faso	0.423	+0.021
Sierra Leone	0.419	-0.001
Niger	0.354	+0.001

In the Very High Human Development category, Norway (0.953), Switzerland (0.944) and Australia (0.939) occupied the top three positions, as they did in our last report.