Ghana is gradually crawling up the higher human development ranking ladder, having moved up five points from 133rd to 129th between 1998 and 2000 in the Human Development Index (HDI).

Ghana's HDI, as calculated in the global Human Development Report, showed a rise from a value 0.473 to 0.556 and from a status of a "low human development" country to that of a "medium development" country. Putting it in context, however, this positive development still puts Ghana very low in her new category where the average is 0.673. It is equally important to note that the average HDI for middle income countries, the category to which Vision 2020 aspires, is 0.750.

The continuous abyssal performance of the country's general development has been attributed to the apparent marginal use of science and technology in pursuit of modernisation, according to the Ghana Human Development Report 2000.

The report, which was launched in Accra last week by the Vice-President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, strongly advocated for the use of science and technology as the central focal point in Ghana's drive towards social and economic effort towards sustainable development.

A former vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Akilagpa Sawyer, who edited the report, noted that the core feature of the report was the centrality of science and technology in addressing the nation's problems.

The Ghana Human Development Report (GHDR) is an offshoot of the United Nations Global Human Development Report. The objective of the human development concept is to promote the notion that sustainable human development should, in the final analysis, extend the health, knowledge and incomes of people by expanding their choices and opportunities.

Within this definition, human development in the Ghanaian context is assessed in terms of the health, education and livelihoods of people.

The 2000 report is the fourth in the series of collaborative effort between the Government of Ghana, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), a teaching, research and advocacy unit of the University of Ghana, Legon.

Since it was initiated in 1997, the GHDRs have been produced under various themes. The 2000 report is under the theme "Science, Technology and Human Development".

The central starting point of the latest report is the highlighting of the knowledge and application of science and technology in Ghana, and using it to build the capacity base of the country, either for advocacy or ordinary use.

The three part report covered the state of human development; putting science and technology to work; and capacity building in science and technology.

The report shifted from the hitherto dominant paradigm which rated the state of a country's development in terms of statistical indices and physical acquisitions or properties such as the number of houses, automobiles, television sets or telephone lines owned by individuals or households.

The new global dialogue on human development looks at the central concern of the individual relating to education, health and livelihood, and these formed the focus of the 2000 report.

Also, the report focused on cross-cutting issues like accessibility, equity and effectiveness of policies. And the outcome showed slow and fluctuating progress, marked by setbacks in addressing the basic needs of the people.

The state of human development (as measured in terms of livelihood and economy) showed considerable drop in poverty level from 52 percent in 1992 to 40 percent in 1999, but worsened in some other areas, notably the savannah belt. The period also recorded a dramatic increase in child labour, low job creation and decline in real wages. All these manifested themselves in low productivity, which in itself, is a linkage of low skills and low application of science and technology, according to the report.

Statistics in the report indicated that even though Ghana's HDI is below the average for developing countries, it is still higher than the average for the least developed countries and sub-Saharan Africa respectively.

The report showed a slow, unstable and uneven progress in science education. Even though the report acknowledges an expansion in infrastructure and a renewed emphasis on quality of teaching, it also identified declining gross enrolment ratios and low completion rate.

The establishment of science resource centres, improved Senior Secondary School (SSS) science pass rates and the spread of Intermediate Technology Transfer Units are some of the positive developments captured by the report.

However, it noted that overall pass rates in science is still highly unsatisfactory, while girls lag behind even further. The report also identified inadequate funding, poorly equipped laboratories and libraries, weak science foundation at basic school level and weak socialisation in science culture as some of the negative developments.

Giving an overview of the report, Sawyer made an urgent appeal to Government to implement the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action, which fixed a threshold of one percent of GDP to science and technology in all West African countries.

In Ghana, the level of support has hovered around the level of 0.3 percent, which is sharply below what pertains in some South-east Asian countries like Korea, Malaysia and Singapore where the threshold is 2.0 percent. And the level is even higher in the advanced countries where the threshold is 3.0 percent of GDP.

The UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana, Alfred Fawundu, expressed the hope that the recommendations contained in the report will find concrete expression in policies and programmes that would put science and technology education at the centre stage of the country's development process.