Jerekandje J. Amwaandangi
3 October 2008
opinion
Windhoek — On 21 March 2008 Namibia had achieved 18 years of independence but still a lot of our citizens live in poverty. Namibia is a country endowed with enormous amount of natural wealth and a small population, hence statistically there is supposed to be no poor person in this country.
The challenging problem facing our nation today is to find the right formula on how to eradicate poverty which is the source of most social problems facing our nation today. The income gap between the poor and rich is very big and every reasonable and honest Namibian will agree with me that as a nation, we definitely need to find a solution to this problem.
It is an undeniable fact that our country has inherited a terrible colonial system of apartheid which disabled the advancement of the majority of our people even up to today. The apartheid system made sure that the dependency syndrome, low esteem and ignorance will be part of most of our people's lives for a very long time. In other words, poverty and hopelessness will be part of daily lives of the majority of our people for a very long time to come unless as a nation we come up with a practical, fast, right and realistic meticulous plan to address the current status quo.
In my opinion the plan should include the following two important components:
Promote patriotism and nationalism at all levels of our society. The story of humanity largely shows that when we do things our way without coordinated efforts, usually disaster follows. While we might progress in knowledge and capabilities of all sorts, we still fall into the same traps of selfishness, greed and pride, which lead to divisions that we experience in both our personal lives and in society.
Therefore, our people need to be made aware to value and honour fellow citizens and the country above anything else.
In this manner slowly but surely, our people will change for good and do away with social evils like tribalism, racism, selfishness, greed, jealousy and ignorance. This will result in our society becoming more tolerant, caring, considerate, supportive and integrated.
Get practical and realistic in tackling poverty. Poverty eradication and economic development can only be achieved if and only if the following four key basic human necessities, namely, education, health care, housing and food security are properly addressed.
The improvement of the education system is critical and needs urgent attention in order to accelerate skills development.
a) Create ideal model schools at various levels of our communities (rural & urban) and adapt all other schools to those models.
b) Adopt a strict schools management initiative to curb vandalism and promote proper administration of schools' assets especially school funds so that they can be utilized especially for maintenance of school properties and acquisition of teaching aid materials. Vandalism of school properties should be curbed by holding school principals and hostel matrons accountable.
c) Compulsory education for every child until the age of 16 and discipline among school learners should be reinforced and parents and guardians should be held accountable for their children's education.
d) Accelerate school feeding programmes using local food supply especially in poor rural communities.
e) Effective implementation of performance management system such that teachers' performance are be linked to salaries
f) Decentralization of tertiary educational institutions at regional level and establish more technical and special tertiary institutions as per skills need of the country in order to absorb young school leavers and equip them with practical skills for them to become skilled and productive.
g) Aim to achieve quality and uniform primary and secondary education systems for both private and government schools.
h) Discourage commercialization of education through establishment of private schools for the rich or certain groups of people and aim to establish integrated schools irrespective of status, colour or race.
i) Public tertiary institutions such as Unam and Polytechnic should be fully subsidized by government in order for them to offer free tertiary education to all Namibians irrespective of their income groups.
j) Increase scholarships funding for post-graduate studies in fields of crucial importance towards our country's goal of achieving economic development based on innovation.
k) Accelerate the establishment and funding of scientific research institutions in various fields.
Health Care
We should aim to create a safe and quality health care system which caters for all citizens of this country.
a) Regulate private medical care in order to curb exorbitant and unreasonable medical charges and make it more affordable even to the lower working income groups so that the government can concentrate on the provision of quality health care for the poor and unemployed.
b) Improve the standard of public run hospitals and clinics in order to attract private patients with private medical aid, thereby generating more income for government in order to achieve a quality health care system for all citizens.
c) Accelerate the establishment of a fully fledged faculty of medicine at Unam in order to train our own doctors and medical specialists locally.
d) Establish a medical research institute to research on diseases such HIV/AIDS for us to kick-start our own biotechnology industry, and ultimately we should aim to produce our own vaccines and medical drugs.
Food Security
Food is a crucial resource for any living organism to survive. In order to have a healthier nation, food should be plenty and affordable and this can only happen if local food production is promoted on a large scale.
a) Assist subsistence farmers to adopt new farming methods using modern technology instead of sticking to old traditional farming ways. This can be achieved through active awareness campaigns to change the mindset of the people and allocate modern farming equipment and resources such as fertilizers, tractors, cultivating and planting machinery to communities in rural areas. Communities should also be trained and educated that resources belong to them and not the government and should take ownership.
b) Promote small scale irrigation schemes for cash crops such as vegetables and fruits in communal areas. This can be achieved by assisting rural communities especially those who live near perennial rivers, with skills and irrigation equipment. Rain water harvesting through excavation of earth dams and rehabilitation of existing ones especially in the northern regions should be carried out in order to promote small scale irrigation schemes in these regions using harvested rain water. In areas where there is abundant underground water boreholes should be drilled for irrigation.
c) Awareness campaigns aimed at subsistence crop farmers not only to produce for their own consumption but also to encourage them to produce enough surpluses which they can sell to local markets in order for them to generate extra income.
d) Subsistence farmers should be encouraged to grow alternative cash crops such as sunflower and cotton instead of traditional crops in order for them to earn a reasonable living income.
e) The Green Scheme should lift off with the establishment of large scale national irrigation schemes in areas such as Okavango, Caprivi, Tsumeb, Otavi and Grootfontein where there is abundant water supply.
Housing
Provision of low-cost free housing for the poor with proper sanitation should become a priority.
a) The Build Together Programme should be complemented with a yearly government budget to build free low cost housing for the poor both in rural and urban areas utilizing low cost building materials which occur in abundance such as building stones and clay tile roofing.
b) Availability and provision of potable drinking water to all of our communities should continue to remain a top priority.
c) Encourage our communities to live a hygienic lifestyle irrespective of their levels in society especially with importance of constructing proper ablution facilities
Marching Towards Economic Development
Economic development is still and will remain a huge challenge to our nation. First and foremost, lack of skills among the majority of our citizens hampers the economic development of our country but at the same time, we need to put in place the right mechanisms and policies to stimulate internal economic growth.
We should always bear in mind that the destiny of our country is in our own hands and we should never fool ourselves that outsiders will develop our country. Therefore, we owe it to ourselves now and to the future generations to come to make sure that we do things right in order to create wealth which benefits every citizen of this beautiful country. Permanent wealth creation can only be achieved when we aim to build an economy based on innovation rather than a factor key or foreign direct investment based economy. To achieve this goal, we need to take some of the following points into consideration:
a) We should aim to establish at least one vocational training institution per political region specializing in different areas of studies such as crop farming, animal farming, food processing and packaging, leather processing, furniture and wood processing, solar manufacturing, etc. Existing vocational training institutions should be expanded in order to accommodate other fields of vocational studies. This will equip young people especially Grade 10 school leavers with practical skills to become successful entrepreneurs or to be employable in different types of manufacturing industries.
b) Our country should aim to have science and science-intensive industries as the core of the economy and key to maintain independent foreign policy, sovereignty and Namibia's position in the global world.
Therefore, the development of innovation through the creation of technology parks and support and promotion of small businesses engaged in science-intensive spheres should be strongly encouraged.
Technology parks should incorporate high-tech enterprises in such sectors as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and other kinds of technology as well as scientific research organizations, educational institutions providing staff for such enterprises, and other related ventures.
In this way, we will make sure that all novel ideas in the country will follow an established pattern from conception to commercial realization.
Comprehensive and balanced approaches to innovation, science and business partnerships, and the stimulation of business to develop innovations should be top priorities in this area. Personnel training, in particular youth training, is important for developing innovation because innovation is investment in people, in their education. Various venture capital funds should be established to develop this area.
c) Ownership and exploration of strategic resources such as minerals (diamonds, uranium, gold and oil and gas deposits) and fishing must be under majority state control for the government to maximize its income in order to fund economic developmental goals and establish a stabilization fund to accrue surplus revenue. The stabilization fund will then cushion the government budget in the event of economic plunge in sectors such as mining and fishing which currently are the backbone of our economy and the entire country and its population depend on these resources.
Empowerment of Previously Disadvantaged
The economic empowerment of previously disadvantaged majority groups of our people remains a big challenge. As much we have political independence, our economy is still in the hands of very few and a wealthy previously advantaged minority group. The challenging question is how can we distribute the economic wealth equitably among both groups of our citizens?
a) First foremost one of the policies we embraced after independence was the policy of national reconciliation. This policy was meant to work in the best interest of all citizens of this country not only on the political front but also socially and economically.
Our fellow white citizens need to share their creamy economic cake with fellow indigenous countrymen and women as a token of their appreciation of this precious policy of national reconciliation. Instead they are very protective of their economic interests such that they even make government wealth distribution goals very difficult to achieve, e.g land reform programme. Peace and stability we are enjoying today in our country can only be sustained if there is better life for everyone and therefore we need to share the economic wealth rather than being greedy and have little or nothing in future.
Reconciliation without transformation is unacceptable.
b) One of the building blocks of the society we live in is communities. We therefore should aim to empower communities more than individuals. Empowering communities will fast track poverty alleviation among the majority of our people because wealth will be shared broadly.
Community venture capital funds need to be established in order to finance share equities for community trust funds in successful establishments in key economic sectors such as tourism, fishing, mining, properties, etc.
c) The government's economic empowerment policy of the previously disadvantaged need to be broadened such that it will compel players in sectors such as tourism, mining, fishing and retailing to have meaningful indigenous shareholding especially rural community trusts. Our economic empowerment policy should also be horned to prioritize the previously disadvantaged groups to purchase prime land at very affordable prices.
Correcting past injustices should become government's top priority no matter how painful and unpopular it can be to some groups of our society.
Our people have sacrificed and endured suffering just for too long and it is highly unacceptable to continue to protect the interest of very few minorities at the cost of the masses.
Finally it is our collective dream, vision and servant leadership which will define our nation's destiny.
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