MONEY isn’t everything. That’s the idea behind the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

It incorporates measures for income, life expectancy and education into a single development score, which is designed to give a holistic sense of how a country is doing.

The latest report was published yesterday, providing a good opportunity to chart progress over the past 25 years, addoring to The Economist.

Rwanda has made the most progress, which is all the more impressive given that its level of development fell during the Genocide of 1994.

Rwandans can now expect to live almost 32 years longer than in 1990, and spend twice as long at school. China comes in at number two.

Its score today is roughly what South Korea’s was in 1990.

Happily, all 142 countries with complete data (for a few places, such as Ethiopia and Somalia, some data are missing) are more developed than they were a quarter of a century ago, except unlucky Swaziland, which has been devastated by AIDS.

Finance and Economic Planning minister Claver Gatete welcomed the fact Rwanda had made the most progress, globally, in the human development index over the last quarter a century.

"This is in line with the government’s Vision 2020 that puts people at the centre of our development process to become a knowledge based economy and, hence, the focus of national investments in education, health and inclusive development, among others,” he said.

This has helped to sustain economic growth at 8 per cent after the (1994) Genocide against the Tutsi and reduced poverty levels from about 78 per cent in 1995 to 39.1 per cent last year and improved our life expectancy to 64.5 years according to the last census, Minister Gatete added.