Botswana halved poverty head count
Lerato Maleke | Wednesday September 3, 2014 15:29
According to the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Solomom Sekwakwa, by 2009, Botswana had already halved the poverty head count ratio from 47% in 1993 to 19.3% 2009.
Sekwakwa said the nation also reduced extreme poverty by 72.6% between 2002 and 2009 alone “with modest but well thought out adjustments to policy and strategy responses to poverty, especially social protection. Botswana could eradicate extreme poverty by 2016”.
He said that access to primary education is near universal for Botswana and that the country has also met the water and sanitation targets and has made good progress on HIV/AIDS, both in terms of reducing incidence and delivering access to treatment and care. However, Sekwakwa stated that humanity would also look at its MDG performance with a fair measure of discomfort and that many of the MDGs targets would not be met. “Notably those on child and maternal mortality,” he said. He further revealed that more than a billion people still live below US$1.25 per day and that the world is seriously imperiled by a high paced loss of biodiversity and climate change. He said that where progress has been made, it is very uneven, citing a case where there has been little progress against poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, where in 2010, 48% of the people lived below the daily ration. This was down a measly six percentage points from 54% in 1990.
“To put the extent of underachievement in perspective, global consultations towards the post 2015 agenda suggest the MDGs were not ambitious enough,” he noted. However, he said that income inequality in most Sub-Saharan countries have increased in a deeply discouraging way, including Botswana.
Among other things, Sekwakwa stated that Botswana has also struggled with the child and maternal mortality targets and that beyond access to water and improved sanitation, Botswana faces serious environmental challenges; loss of biodiversity; increasing carbon dioxide emissions; land use conflicts; desertification and climate change. Furthermore, he said that the water and energy supply challenges for Botswana are serious, “though not insurmountable”. Nevertheless, Sekwakwa pointed out that the MDGs have shown the value of collective action and that they have raised the level of effort towards addressing human deprivation in both developed and developing countries. He said that developed countries availed more resources to countries in need, especially through official development assistance and debt relief while developing countries in turn, delivered more on their end of the bargain, especially reforms towards better governance and economic management.
He said that as Botswana prepares to articulate its position on the post 2015 development agenda, it is necessary for the country to reflect on the emerging global consensus around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are being proposed to replace the MDGs and were placed before the General Assembly in mid-July 2014. The consensus, he noted, points towards a transformative shift that will deliver inclusive growth, create opportunity, improve livelihoods and reduce poverty, inequality and exclusion.
These are summarised in the Secretary General’s High Level Panel Report as; Leave no one behind; put sustainable development on the core; transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth; build peace and effective open and accountable institutions for all, and forge a new global partnership for development.
Sekwakwa said that the shifts are similar to the priorities outlined in the Common Africa Position on the Post 2015 Development Agenda.