By Wezi Tjaronda WINDHOEK Namibia wants to completely eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2012. Poverty is defined as the inability to afford the minimum basic necessities of life, while extreme poverty describes households that spend 80 percent or more of their income on food. The highest numbers of extremely poor households come from Kavango, which has 47 percent, Omusati with 46.7 percent and Caprivi with 43.5 percent. In the Khomas Region, only 0.6 percent of households in 2003/4 were described as extremely poor. Extreme poverty has gone down from nine percent in 1993/4 to 3.9 percent in 2003/4, which represents a reduction of 55 percent, in line with Millennium Development Goals that require countries to reduce their poverty by half by 2015. The NDP 2 target was to reduce the number of relatively poor and extremely poor households by five percent and this has been exceeded. The San community suffers the highest incidence at 63 percent. However, 29 percent of the Khoisan live in extreme poverty, followed by Rukavango at 7.4 percent and 6.6 percent for communities in Caprivi region. The majority of poor households are located in rural communal areas and squatter and shanty settlements that are environmentally highly vulnerable and often headed by females or poorly educated males that are historically disadvantaged and have a low status in society. Most of the rural poor depend on subsistence farming and disaster relief. A background paper on NDP 3 Goal 15, ‘Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger’, which falls under the Key Result Area Quality of Life, says unemployment, HIV/AIDS, lack of adequate health services and assets seem to be the major problems contributing to poverty. The targets of NDP 3 for the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger during the period 2007/08 to 2011/12 include reducing the proportion of households living in poverty from 28 percent to 20 percent, reducing extreme poverty from four percent to zero, reducing the proportion of people living below US$1 a day and the prevalence of underweight among under fives and to increase the dairy calories intake. In a presentation to the Thematic Working Group 6 with Quality of Life as the key result area, the National Planning Commission’s Beaven Walubita said food production levels are also low, variable and uncertain due to weather conditions, while income from rural people who depend on agriculture is low, which makes the country import most of its food. The background paper said Namibia has severe food insecurity at household level where affordability is a major factor, because of problems in sourcing money to purchase the food. “The households that earn between N$250 and N$350 a month experience serious insufficient purchases of food and resort to using severe coping strategies such as own production, bartering and exchanges of labour,” the paper said. NDP 3 goal strategies are to strengthen and diversify the agricultural base on which poor and rural communities rely through improving agricultural production, ensuring that poor communities broaden their income base through diversification by participating in non-farm activities, and building a critical mass of SMEs through focusing initial promotional efforts on location of selected cost-competitive production of goods already being consumed in the regions. Other strategies include ensuring good health for all citizens, expanding access to water supply to rural areas, strengthening Namibia’s safety nets for the protection of the temporarily and chronically vulnerable and those affected by HIV/AIDS and expanding employment opportunities. Targeted poverty reduction programmes are the Rural Poverty Reduction Programme, National Household and Income Expenditure Survey, and the Participatory Poverty Assessments.