Tracking Nigeria’s Future Progress towards Achieving Substantial Reduction of under Five Mortality Using a Machine Learning Technique

This study uses annual time series data on under five mortality rate (U5MR) for Nigeria from 1964 to 2020 to predict future trends of U5MR over the period 2021 to 2030. Residuals and forecast evaluation criteria indicate that the applied ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable in forecasting under five mortality rate. ANN model projections indicate that U5MR will remain very high throughout the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the Nigerian government to allocate more resources to the maternal and child health (MNCH) program to ensure availability of medical supplies and medical staff at all levels of healthcare.