- An address delivered by Theo-Ben Gurirab, Speaker of the National Assembly, at the 118th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in Cape Town, South Africa: April 13-18

I am happy to be here and I join those who have spoken before me to thank our host Parliament, jointly led by Hon. Baleka Mbete and Hon. M. J. Mahlangu, for the generous hospitality and great comfort put at our disposal. We in the region of Southern Africa and all of us from the Continent of Africa are happy to see many delegations attending this IPU conference in Cape Town, in a free and democratic South Africa.

We cannot forget the many decades of untold sacrifices, including long prison terms of our leaders and members of the broad-based Liberation Movement, not to speak of many thousands who died for freedom, justice and equality for all in this region. It is here where Africa had to fight its last critical battles and eventually won the war of self-determination and national independence. We are delighted to see you all here.

As I take the floor to make my contribution, I think of similar major parliamentary conferences we hosted in Windhoek, Namibia - one of the IPU Plenary Assembly, like this one, and the other of CPA Africa Region in 1996 and 2002 respectively.

I think also of conferences held under the aegis of Franco-African Dialogue, Lusophone Initiatives and others that have been equally important. All contributed to further enlarging areas of sharing best practices, promoting regional integration and exchanging technology and enhancing skills development. These paramount transformation issues continue to pre-occupy our deliberations.

We are very much aware of the threatening state of the world economy. Spillover effects on African economies cannot be excluded and developing countries are thus facing serious challenges.

While economists are debating degrees of severity of such challenges, the impact of economic hardship is felt by those affected by underdevelopment, poverty, disease and hunger. Stability, nation building and social development are demanding problems for all of us.

I, therefore, commend the host Parliament and its leadership for inviting us to debate issues of poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS and to recommend workable solutions for action by our Governments.

National Parliaments have an important role to play in determining in which ways our Governments and partners such as Private Sector, Labour Unions, Parliamentary Political Parties and Civil Society Operators can work together in driving forward economic growth, poverty reduction and employment creation for the benefit of our communities.

The aforementioned socio-economic challenges remain high priority areas in the formulation of national budgets, while at the same time, Governments are expected to embark upon prudent fiscal policies and better management of public expenditure to sustain macroeconomic stability and productivity over the long term.

In Namibia, poverty reduction, income distribution and sustainability of welfare of our citizens are overarching goals for our Government. The following national policies, programmes and legal framework speak to what we are doing:

1. Vision 2030 is our long-term development framework to ensure social transformation and national development in the next 22 years. Vision 2030 is an integrated programme that will take Namibia from the present into the future, a vision that will guide us in making deliberate efforts towards improving the quality of life of our people and rendering poverty a thing of the past. That's where we want to go.

2. Namibia has aligned the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with Vision 2030. Our country is thus firmly committed towards reduction of poverty and meeting the MDGs that are ensuring to making a difference in the conditions of living of the people, through hard work and generous support of our friends and partners. Similarly, Namibia has formulated poverty reduction strategy options that we are implementing. These development initiatives are closely coupled with targeted implementation of the Decentralization Programme. This is intended to improving service delivery and fast-tracking transformation in rural and peri-urban areas of the country.

3.The involvement of local communities in systemic poverty assessment efforts is being carried out through Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPA).

Its focus is on the root causes of poverty. By this we want to further strengthen Government's initiatives and teamwork with social partners with a view to creating employment and empower the people with knowledge and skills for self-help.

Resource allocation from the National Budget over the past few years, has been earmarked for protecting the poor, stimulating growth and creating more employment and capacity building development opportunities. The Government's budget strategy is summed up in three focal areas:

- To improve the social safety net to reduce poverty, particularly in least developed areas of our mineral-rich but still poverty stricken country.

- To foster human resource development through provision of better healthcare, increased education programmes and promotion of gender equity.

- To invest in improving competitiveness and accelerating growth, with addition of new jobs and by investing in more skills development for workers and the youth. This means we need to do more by:

- Improving social welfare of vulnerable and marginalised groups to achieve progress. To this end the Government has set aside substantial resources from the national budget to provide social grants and welfare coverage for orphans and vulnerable children, pensioners, as well as war veterans. Resources are also being made available to mitigate the effects of natural disasters such as droughts, floods and to repair damaged infrastructure and communication outlets.

- Fostering human resource and skills development particularly for the youth is a continuing national goal. Namibia continues to dedicate a major share of its national budget to education, health, housing, public safety and security.

In this regard, the Government has introduced the Education and Training Sector Improvement Programme (ETSIP) to, over the short term, ensure high quality educational and training outcomes that will facilitate a steady transition towards a knowledge-based society which will prosper and empower many of our local communities and keep their hopes alive.

Unemployment continues to pose a serious challenge for our country as with other developing countries. Government, in the 2008/09 - 2010/11 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, is addressing this challenge in various ways.

On the supply side, education and vocational training has received a substantial input. On the demand side, the Government is investing in those sectors with potential for employment creation such as mining, agriculture, tourism, fisheries, SMEs promotion, infrastructure development, beneficiation and others such as ICT and engineering.

Furthermore, the Government's Policy on Land Reform is a major commitment towards addressing inequality, access to capital and ensuring ownership rights for many Namibians. Efforts to enhance full participation of women in the process of decision-making and access to capital, in both public and private sectors, are ongoing major concerns.

All of us are working hard to contain and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. We are enhancing equitable access for infected and affected persons to treatment and essential social services. We are also combating stigmatisation which demeans their humanity and makes them targets for discrimination.

National Parliaments, aided by friends and partners, should see to it that one of the important resolutions adopted by the 115th IPU Assembly in Geneva, in 2006, on "The role of Parliaments in overseeing the achievement of the MDGs, in particular with regard to the problem of indebtedness and the eradication of poverty and corruption" is implemented fully.

I, therefore, urge National Parliaments, consistent with our oversight obligations, to engage and urge our Governments to put programmes and initiatives in place that will effectively tackle the challenge of poverty, on the one hand, and empowerment of the people, on the other. Even after we have left Cape Town, the clarion call of "Pushing Back The Frontiers Of Poverty", will continue to ring loud and clear in our minds and stir our hearts for action.