Since the UN 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all 193 member states, governments and researchers are increasingly trying to monitor performance in sustainability (1). The monitoring of sustainable development (SD) performance has made it necessary to construct a composite index system (2). A composite index, which can evaluate national SD comprehensively and objectively, will not only provide comprehensive status of sustainability, but also provide a policy basis for governments to formulate and implement public policies (3).

As reviewed in the next section, a list of indices have been proposed for sustainability assessment, and it was found that the SD performance of African countries is at the lowest level in the world (4–7). Moreover, most of the existing studies have pointed out improving the SD level of African countries is the key to achieving the global SDGs, and Africa is the continent which needs the most attention (3). The reason is that the leading SD countries have achieved a high SD level, the countries with medium SD level have found a way to increase SD, while the low SD countries (mainly in Africa) are still unable to prosper (1).

At present, many literature papers have studied the SD of African countries, especially in the aspects of governance, economy, resources, and environment, like Selmier and Newenham-Kahindi (8), Mutiiria et al. (9), Asongu and Nnanna (10), and Liyanage et al. (11), but the research on public life, education, and welfare is not enough. For example, Atisa et al. (12) studied legal structures, governance, and sustainable development in African countries.

Therefore, this paper aims to study the SD of African countries in public life, education, and welfare, so as to help governments to monitor the status of sustainability and formulate sustainable development policies in these aspects. We firstly propose a new method for the assessment of SD in public life, education, and welfare based on existing studies. Then we assess and analyze the SD of African countries with these aspects in mind. After that, we also make a comparison between African countries and other countries in the world.

The rest of the paper is organized into five sections. Section Literature Review is the literature review. Section Methods and Data describes the method for the assessment of SD in public life, education, and welfare, as well the data source. Section Results includes the results. Section Discussion: A Comparison Between African and Other Countries compares the SD of African countries and that of other countries. Section Conclusion concludes the findings.

This paper measures the weight of four indicators with the entropy method (see the last column of Table 3). As a result, the weights of “education,” “health,” “drinking water,” and “sanitation facilities,” respectively accounted for 36.36, 35.09, 14.60, and 13.95%. It means that education is the most important factor for sustainable development in public life, education, and welfare. And education is as important as health.

According to the weights in Table 3, we aggregate the four indicators into a composite index, and assess the SD score for 51 Africa countries as well the other countries (see Table 4 and Appendix Table A1). As a result, the SD score of each country is ranged from 0 to 1. The SD score of each Africa country is shown in Table 4, the top five countries are Mauritius (0.6514), Gabon (0.5836), Gambia (0.5648), Morocco (0.5496), and Togo (0.5474), while the bottom five countries are Mali (0.3863), Mauritania (0.3857), Central African Republic (0.3377), Chad (0.3260), and Niger (0.3031).

The SD score of each country showed distinct characteristics in income level. These countries are divided into four categories according to income levels following the World Bank's standard, namely high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries. As Table 4 shows, countries with higher SD score tended to be have a higher income level. For example, there are only three low-income countries in the top 20, while 13 low-income countries are in the bottom 20. This means that there may be a positive correlation between income level and SD score. The main reasons are: (1) Those low-income countries have very limited fiscal revenue, leading to insufficient supply of public goods, such as education, medical care, public health, etc. (36); (2) Some low-income countries lack a systematic and efficient public management system, which makes the supply of public goods inefficient (28).

Figure 1 shows the geographical distribution of SD score in Africa. It should be noted that the darker the blue, the higher the SD score and SD performance in public life, education, and welfare. The countries in North and South Africa have the deepest blue and the highest SD score, such as South Africa and Morocco. On the contrary, central African countries north of the equator have the lightest blue and the lowest SD score, which means that SD performance is at the bottom level, such as in Central African Republic, Chad, and Niger. In sum, the geographical distribution of SD score shows that SD is high in South and North Africa, while low in the middle.

In addition, we can find the different characteristics of SD status between North African and Sub-Saharan African countries. As Figure 1 shows, above the dark blue dividing line are North African countries, and below are Sub-Saharan African countries. First, the SD performance of North African countries is obviously better than that of Sub-Saharan African countries. This is not only because it is adjacent to the Mediterranean and the climate environment is conducive to survival and development, but also because it is close to those European countries with prosperous economy and society. Second, among Sub-Saharan African countries, the SD score increases from north to south. One of the important reasons is geographical location and climatic environment. And another more important reason is that the countries in the south have established a relatively mature political and institutional system, especially in South Africa.

The SD scores of 179 countries are shown in Figure 2 and Appendix Table A1. As a result, the top 10 countries are Denmark (0.7840), the Netherlands (0.7423), Sweden (0.7095), Finland (0.7075), Norway (0.6960), Germany (0.6915), Canada (0.6895), the United States (0.6856), Belgium (0.6807), and Austria (0.6799), while the bottom 10 countries are Nepal (0.3980), Eritrea (0.3959), Sierra Leone (0.3952), Mali (0.3863), Mauritania (0.3857), Afghanistan (0.3729), Yemen (0.3391), Central African (0.3377), Chad (0.3260), and Niger (0.3031).

The SD score and ranking of each country show distinct characteristics. Most of the high-SD countries are in Europe and North America. The countries with a low SD score are mainly in Africa and Asia. In addition, we find that all the developed countries¹ are high SD score countries, and most of them are ranked in the top 30, while most of the bottom 30 countries are developing countries in Africa.

There are three main reasons for the poor SD performance in developing countries. First, the level of economy and residents' income is relatively low. Second, the supply of public goods and services is insufficient and inefficient, like education, public health, and environmental protection, due to poor governments or inadequate fiscal revenue (36). Lastly, some developing countries, such as China, are bombarded with such problems as inadequate management and technology of pollution control and resource utilization, while still promoting economic growth at all costs, which damages national sustainable development (3).

The geographical distribution of the SD score is shown in Figure 2. As the figure shows, the darker the blue, the higher the NSDI of the country and the better its performance in sustainable development, while the white indicates missing data. We find that European and North American countries have the highest average SD scores, Africa the lowest, and South America and Asia in the middle.

There is an important reason for that geographical distribution. On the one hand, the countries with a higher economic level always maintain a good performance in sustainable development, because of their established and sound system in public management. On the other hand, those low-income countries not only have a poor economic foundation, but also do not have the above conditions, so they always find it difficult to improve SD performance. Some countries have even been mired in war and extreme poverty.

This paper aims to study the SD of African countries in public life, education, and welfare, so as to help policy makers better monitor the status of sustainable development and formulate development policies. So, we firstly proposed a new method for the assessment of SD in public life, education, and welfare, and then assessed and analyzed the SD of African countries in these aspects. We found that: (1) there was a positive correlation between income level and SD across African countries; (2) most SD leading countries were in South and North Africa, while most low SD countries were in the middle; and (3) there were different characteristics of SD status between North African and Sub-Saharan African countries.

There is an important research question that needs to be discussed: how to improve the sustainable development level of those low-SD African countries and narrow the development gap among countries? Especially for the Sub-Saharan countries with poor performance in public life, education, and welfare. The cases of North African countries and South Africa may be a reference for those Sub-Saharan countries. Except for natural endowments such as climate, environment, and geographical location, many aspects of North African countries are worthy of reference. First, for those countries still in political chaos, the establishment of a stable political power is the basis of all development. Second, following the practices of European and other developed countries, establishing and improving the judicial, economic, and fiscal institutional systems in combination with the characteristics and development situation of their own countries is vital. After that, taking economic growth as the first priority of national development, and establishing economic and trade cooperation with Europe, the United States, China, and other more developed countries is needed. Lastly, when the economic and income level reaches a certain stage, the government should pay more attention to sustainable development in public life, education, and welfare.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

DL conceived and designed the research, provided guidance throughout the entire research process, and responsible for all R&R works. DL and GH wrote and supplemented the English paper. HJ participated in data analysis. F-ST reviewed and edited the paper. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors acknowledge funding support from the Major Program Project of the National Social Science Fund of China (No: 19ZDA055), Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (ZSTU) Scientific Research Fund (No: 21092117-Y), and the Prosperity Plan of Philosophy and Social Science Research of ZSTU (No: 21096075-Y).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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