WINDHOEK – After 24 years of independence, Namibia has a good story to tell, says National Planning Commission (NPC) Director-General Tom Alweendo, who announced that more than 400 000 people in Namibia were lifted out of poverty due to carefully crafted distributive policies, combined with a steady GDP growth.
“We are therefore no longer the country with the highest income inequality in the world. We have more education facilities than before and the literacy rate for the population (for) 15 years and older has increased from 76 percent in 2001 to 89 percent in 2011,” he beamed.
Alweendo made this remark during the launch of the Human Development Report 2014 in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week.
He praised Namibia for a steady improvement on its human development agenda and said that “today Namibia is certainly a better place to live in than it was before independence”.
He stated that Namibia’s per capita income has increased from N$5 500 at independence to N$55 500 at the end of 2013.
“While per capita income hides skewed income distribution, this is nevertheless a significant achievement,” he said.
Alweendo said that on the social development front, poverty has significantly declined from 70 percent for people living in poverty to 28 percent in 2011.
Alweendo went on to say that Namibia is one of the countries that have made significant gains in the treatment of HIV, malaria and other infectious diseases and life expectancy has improved from 61 years in 1991 to 65 years in 2011.
“We have one of the most comprehensible social protection systems where the most vulnerable of our citizens are being assisted,” he noted.
He said that this should, however, not be viewed as though the country does not have challenges, as there are still serious development challenges, such as unemployment.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has also ranked Namibia as the fifth best performing country out of 15 countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) when it comes to human development. Musinga Bandora, UNDP Resident Representative, made this revelation and said that Namibia has been on an upward trend since the first report produced in 1990, with the exception of the period between 1995-2000, when human development slumped in the country – a factor that could be attributed to health when antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) were not rolled out on a large scale.
Namibia is preceded by Seychelles, Mauritius, Botswana and South Africa, respectively.
“In this regard, the country has to put in place mechanisms to ensure robust resilience to avoid seeing reversals to the gains in economic and social development, and to be able to absorb potentially destabilising shocks of every kind and address vulnerabilities,” he said.
Bandora noted that this year’s report was themed around reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience in many spheres including livelihoods, personal security, physical environment, global politics and economic governance systems
He said that the report identifies systematic and structural vulnerabilities, with systematic vulnerability referring to persons exposed to more fragility throughout their lives as a consequence of structural barriers in society.
Structural vulnerability is associated with weakness of institutions and policies at the global, national and local levels, which affect states and communities.
On the world Human Development Index trends (HDI) from 1980-2013, Namibia is ranked number 127 out of 187 countries.
The top 10 countries with very high human development indicators are Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands, United States, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore and Denmark.
From bottom, Niger, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Guinea and Mozambique lead as the countries with the lowest human development index.