Tracking South Sudan’s Progress Towards Achieving Substantial Reduction of Under Five Mortality by 2030 Using a Machine Learning Method

This study uses annual time series data on under five mortality rate (U5MR) for South Sudan from 1960 to 2020 to predict future trends of U5MR over the period 2021 to 2030. Residuals and forecast evaluation criteria indicates that the applied ANN (12, 12, 1) model is stable in forecasting U5MR. ANN model projections suggest that annual U5MR will remain very high throughout the out of sample period. Therefore, we encourage the South Sudanese government to channel more resources to the maternal and child health program to ensure availability of medical supplies, equipment and healthcare professionals.