Saudi Arabia is a vast desert country, covering an area of 2.15 million sq km with a population of about 23 million.  The country has witnessed massive improvement in socio-economic development in the last 30 years, with significant progress in health, education, housing and environment. There is now an extensive network of modern roads, highways, airports, seaports, power, desalination plants and huge industrial complexes. The Kingdom has modern hospitals, schools, universities, recreation and tourist facilities.

The industrial sector is the dominant source of wealth, creating 51% of GDP with most of this coming from oil and gas mining; the service sector accounts for 43% of GDP and 5% is from agriculture (ref EIU). Saudi Arabia has the largest reserves of petroleum in the world, and is the largest exporter.

 School enrolment is improving with 97.5% of males and 94.5% of females enrolling for primary education, and 92.8% and 88.2% in secondary education [Ministry of Economy & Planning 2003]. Adult literacy is 88% for males and 72% for females; youth illiteracy is 5% and 9% respectively. Average household income grew rapidly between 1970 and 1990 as the benefits of the oil industry were spread widely by government across the Saudi population.  Over 95% of households have access to safe water (WDR 2002), which in some parts of the country, particularly the capital Riyadh is supplied through desalination plants established along the coastline.

 

As can been seen from the lengthening life expectancy in recent years, the overall burden of disease in KSA has reduced markedly, with a large drop in the mortality and morbidity from communicable diseases and a huge drop in maternal mortality. Communicable disease and vector borne outbreaks still occur, but these are no longer the major cause of ill health in KSA. With increasing longevity and with alterations in lifestyle, there has been a consequent change in the patterns of disease, with a marked increase in illnesses related to non-communicable diseases, in particular diabetes and cardio-vascular ailments. Deaths from road traffic accidents have also been increasing, and are now the largest cause of death in adult males aged 16 to 36 years. 

The Global Human Development Report still classes KSA among countries with medium term development, ranking it 71 globally. However a recent Ministry of Economy and Planning & UNDP report suggests that the country may soon be categorized as having high human development. The Ministry of Planning has defined a 2020 vision paper to guide development in KSA, focusing on increasing jobs, per capita income, and reducing poverty