Ever since President Ian Khama announced a major policy shift in the war on poverty at the turn of the decade, the government has matched its words with deeds that prove that it is committed to the ambitious target it set for itself. When the President stated that the focus would move from poverty reduction to eradication, it was obvious that matching talk with action would be a tall order. Poverty reduction efforts in many countries with better resources than Botswana have been a spectacular failure, with governments only paying lip-service to cut down the number of people living in abjection. In Botswana, the picture was no better, with experts saying that the level of inequality in our society was too high for a country at our level of development. But despite this, the government was brave or foolhardy enough - depending of whose opinion you go with - to switch gears from reduction to eradication. Though the government's anti-poverty eradication programmes have been controversial or failures since independence, this has not deterred the powers that be from setting an even higher target. Regardless of the results or the wisdom of the programmes, the government must be commended for a sustained zeal in its latest onslaught on poverty. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that eradication is not as easy as reduction.
However, such issues have not previously prevented government from paying lip-service to some of its programmes. In the anti-poverty war, the government is sustaining fire, the latest salvo being the announcement that plans are afoot to accelerate delivery and implementation of poverty eradication programmes for maximised output. Next week, in the Kweneng village of Diphuduhudu, up to 1,500 people selected from rural parts of the country will gather for the inaugural rollout of the acceleration and implementation programme of the war on poverty. The initiative is to leave no citizen behind in the anti-poverty drive. Importantly, the rollout will involve programmes suitable for Diphuduhudu. This approach is good because it moves away from the traditional one-size-fit-all strategy. It is commendable that the selected beneficiaries have received technical training in counting money, calculating whether they are making a profit and ways of improving their projects.
