The 2017 District League (DLT), compiled by the Centre for Democratic Development and UNICEF, has revealed that the Upper West Region is now the best place to live in Ghana.
The Upper West Region topped the league table as the region with the best security, health, sanitation, education and governance as compared to the others on the average.
Regions traditionally considered poorer, such as the Upper West and Upper East, have slightly higher scores than, say, the Ashanti Region.
There are clearly important shifts in these regional rankings as lower ranking regions have witnessed improved indicators for districts in their regions, and the progress of districts in the Upper West Region is particularly noteworthy.
The DLT provides the country with a holistic overview of the level of development across the entire country.
The objective of the DLT is to increase social accountability in Ghana for improved development. It does this by providing and tracking essential information on wellbeing across the entire country to the district level.
The Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) of the Greater Accra Region came first in the district level rankings, with a score of 80, the highest score ever reached.
The national average score is 64.7, below which 102 districts are found. This compares with an average of 58.9 last year.
With an eventual target of a score of 100 percent, it is clear that the majority of districts are still far from the goal.
Interestingly, there are 9 districts that are new to the top 20, such as Wa West in the Upper West Region. Furthermore, 12 of the districts in the bottom 20 are new, there too, as several featuring there last year have managed to move up.
For instance, North Tongu, which was the 216th district in 2016, has moved up to 196th due to improvements such as in their health indicator.
Some districts have made impressive improvements in their scores. The most improved district this year is Lambussie Karni in the Upper West Region, which improved its score by 23 percentage points, due to increase in it sanitation and health indicators.
Other districts also showed substantial increases in their scores, including Ekumfi in the Central Region by 20 percentage points, due to increases in education and health indicators.
Afadzato South in the Volta Region improved by 19 percentage points due to increases in education, sanitation, health and security indicators.
