Kenya beats sub-Saharan Africa peers in World Bank global human capital index

A Kenyan born today is likely to achieve at most only 52 percent of his or her potential if they survive to adulthood given the inefficiencies and shortfalls in the education and health systems.
This is according to the World Bank’s new Human Capital Index (HCI), which measures human capital of the next generation.
The amount of human capital that a child born today can be expected to deliver as an adult is as a result of the state of health and education currently prevailing in a country where that child lives.
The index, therefore, gives what a generation’s output will be compared to what it could have been.
Using health, survival and education data, the index combines five indicators, which are child survival, school enrolment, quality of learning, healthy growth and adult survival into a single index ranging between 0-1.
The World Bank puts Kenya’s HCI at 0.52 — the highest in sub-Saharan Africa.
The economy loses 48 percent of human capital due to stunting of the children, lower adult survival rate and incomplete education (less than 14 years of high-quality school by age 18).

“Health is an important component of human capital. People are more productive when they are healthier. .. In Nigeria, a programme providing malaria testing and treatment increased workers’ earnings by 10 percent in just a few weeks,” says the report.