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Seminar paper by Mihe Gaomab II |
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| Basic Requirements for Alleviating Poverty, Access to Energy, and Gender Inequalities in Namibia |
| 2. Increasing access to the provision of social services? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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An effective and efficient social service provision is a key to long term poverty alleviation and economic growth. The two sectors that are crucial towards poverty reduction are the provision of education and health services. Where access to these sectors is limited, it is inevitably the poor who are disadvantaged, with consequent effects on health and nutrition, literacy, labour productivity, earning potential, and increased gender balance. At independence, Namibia inherited an education system characterised by major disparities in terms of the distribution of educational opportunities and facilities among the sections of the Namibian economy. Educational reform thus became a priority for the incoming government and to this effect, the allocation of the governments budget to education has increased from around 18 per cent in 1990/91 to 28 percent in 2002/032. This is a substantial amount in comparison to international expenditure on education of around 12 percent, and where Namibia is ranked third highest globally on expenditure of national budgets on education3. Studies also showed that expenditures on primary education yield substantially higher returns rather than secondary and tertiary education4 and Namibia’s share of spending on primary education as a proportion of overall education is a reasonably high of about 60 percent. However, despite these massive budgetary injections into the education sector as well as ensured increased access to the education system, the output of the system and its role in poverty reduction remains questionable. The education system in Namibia is manifested in high rates of dropout (25% compared to 5% in Botswana for e.g.), high repetition in schools, and poor quality of teaching compounded by a slow process of upgrading in-service teacher training. The standard of education varies regionally where the northern regions are particularly disadvantaged with lower numbers of qualified teaching staff and fewer facilities and infrastructure such as water and electricity and teachers housing. Overall, the effectiveness of the education system is low compared to other neighboring countries5. There have however been some improvements where access to education has been extended widely to relatively poor households although cost considerations may have deterred some households from such an access. The gross enrollment rates for primary and secondary schooling for example is 96 percent which is relative higher compared to other African countries, which represents a significant increase of over 76 percent in 1994. There have been some improvements at primary sector education where school leaving statistics show a drop from 70 percent to 50 percent6. The effect of education on poverty reduction can be seen from where the previously disadvantaged groups has been brought into the mainstream of the economy due to increased educational access. This has allowed some of the poor households to diversify their income sources away from dependence on subsistence agriculture and public transfers to income and wages. Anecdotal evidence shows however that such diversification has been very limited due to scarce productive economic opportunities and mismatching of educational output with job requirements. Therefore, it can still be relevant to conclude that the needs of the poor are not significantly met by the priorities of the current education system and that a lot needs be done to real such a goal. In 1990, Namibia’s health system was fragmented and ethnic structured and focussed on catering a high qualitative curative care to small minority of the population. Namibian government thus adopted primary health care as a guiding policy for restructuring health services with continued recognition of curative services. The choice of primary health care was a logical choice for the government because it guarantees an element of targeted poverty reduction process since it encompass improvements in nutrition, safe water supplies, sanitation, adequate housing, maternal and child care services, immunization, prevention of epidemics, health education and curative services. It also ensures equity, empowerment, self-reliance and participation at all levels of the health system. To date, the health system has commanded substantial resources after education in order to address its priorities of ensuring a “health for all by the year 2000” as pronounced by the World Health Organisation. The expenditure remains around 15 percent of total budget on average since the 1990’s. The effect of the health sector on poverty alleviation can be approached from the priority given to community health services where it is mainly located within the areas where the poor resides. The community health services takes up close to 60 percent of whole budget allocated to health and a number of clinics as well as health centers has increased regionally and a number of hospitals has been rationalized7. In order to address the regional disparities in terms of health provision, budget allocations were increased for the most part of the northern regions. But the inherited disparities is still a matter of concern to the government and that a decentralization of the delivery system with community based initiatives at local level would still be required to ensured a equitable, affordable and safe health care system in Namibia. In terms of its effectiveness, Namibia’s health system seems to have made greater strides in terms of effective primary health care delivery. This is indicative of the reduction in infant mortality rate per 1000 from 64 to 57.60 in 1997 (better than that of Kenya and Malawi of 61.8 and 137.2 respectively). The access to safe water and maternal mortality rates are also favorable and comparable (see table below). Namibia has also a high coverage rate of immunization although indications show that it has been declining lately due to administration and capacity problems. Table 1: Social Indicators, Selected African Countries, and Selected Years
Source:African Development Bank, 1999 & Human Development Report, 1999 It is expected that such favorable indicators are a reliable indication of a healthy nation although the health system still has to fight on a front of combating the scourge of HIV/Aids within the Namibian society. In terms of small business development, in 1997 the government has put in place a white paper on the development of small business enterprises8. It is estimated that there could be over 160 000 people employed in small business in Namibia, representing around 10 percent of the Namibian population9. The target groups that could be considered as small business is the informal sector, street vendors, and hawkers in addition to the formalized small business. But there are still teething problems in terms of the targeted groups as the former sectors are sometimes difficult to monitor and has pressing challenges as far as their formalisation within the overall economy are concerned. Small businesses are considered as the main providers of labour intensive productions and therefore as a focus for attraction for employment creation and economic development. They act as essential actors in the developmental process and play a key role in mobilizing resources and allocating them among productive activities. It also acts as an essential vehicle for poverty alleviation through assisting those that were formerly disadvantaged into employment creation and mainstream of the economy. There are still impediments to small business development in Namibia, ranging from legislative constraints at regional and local level, access to credit and current policy framework favoring the large scale and foreign owned companies. But efforts are being addressed to ensure an “enabling environment” for small business so that they are not left in a vulnerable economic position and that barriers to their expansion are reduced significantly. In terms of the role of women and their role in poverty alleviation, according to the 2001 population and housing census, women represents about 52% of the population and suggests that between 30-50 percent of households are effectively female headed10. The census further reveals that women account for 60 percent of all those engaged in skilled and subsistence agricultural work. It is a well known fact that poor rural women comprise the largest demographic group in Namibia and in Africa and is certainly a major target group of any poverty reduction strategy. Despite their representation as being a focal target for poverty reduction, poor rural women remain disadvantaged by unequal access to land, labour, agricultural services and assets, natural resources and employment and empowerment opportunities. Rural women remain underrepresented in decision making and leadership positions. Since independence however, concerted effort has been made to increase the importance of women within the economic and social sphere but unfortunately this has only been mainly for urban women. Urban women do enjoy few policy-making positions at ministerial, regional and local level and special support programs such as “Saamstaan” Housing. For poor rural woman however, existing policies need to be strengthened to take into account the multiple roles of Namibian rural woman as farmers, food providers and income earners. |
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