Netumbo’s final bid for Vision 2030

President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has once again promised to drive Namibia’s development agenda by tackling key issues such as high unemployment, inequality, food insecurity and economic growth as part of the country’s Vision 2030 goals.

During the launch of the sixth National Development Plan (NDP6) yesterday, she acknowledged that unemployment is high because the country’s industrial capacity remains limited.

“It is for this reason that NDP6 aims to propel the country towards an advanced industrialised stage, placing due policy emphasis on mineral resources beneficiation and value-addition to stimulate economic growth and development,” she said.

Nandi-Ndaitwah added that the recent re-classification of Namibia to a lower middle-income country is responsive to the reality of the structural imbalances of the economy and large inequality gap.

The reclassification means that Namibia is eligible to access grant funding and financing instruments on more affordable terms.

“This is beneficial to our developmental agenda and ambitions to foster inclusive growth and shared prosperity. This does not mean, however, that there are no challenges to the re-classification.

“We must commit to hard work and grow the economy to take our people out of poverty,” she said.

According to her, significant work still lies ahead, and NDP6 is the roadmap to get there.

“NDP6 is our plan. It is workable. It can be done,” she said.

Nandi-Ndaitwah said the country’s inclusive development agenda seeks to uplift social well-being and improve the quality of life for all Namibians.

With only four and a half years remaining to Vision 2030, this NDP6 is the final instalment aiming to achieve the objective of transforming Namibia into a developed and industrialised nation.

The formulation of NDP6 has been informed by Vision 2030 and its mid-term review, the NDP5 terminal report, the Swapo manifesto implementation plan, regional consultations, as well as guiding international development frameworks including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, African Union Agenda 2063 and the Southern African Development Community Vision 2050.

Nandi-Ndaitwah called on all Namibians, including the youth, academics, civil society, churches, traditional authorities, businesses and development partners, to play their part.

“Let us continue to work together, united by a common purpose and a shared vision to overcome challenges and build a prosperous Namibia,” she said.

She said ministers and the prime minister will be required to provide regular progress reports, with the president pledging to remain accountable.

FAILED VISION

Political commentator Ndumba Kamwanyah says Vision 2030 has largely lost momentum and been overtaken by new developments and changing realities.

He adds that NDP6 tries to realign with some long-term goals, but it also shows that priorities are shifting.

“Vision 2030 has not been consistently integrated across ministries, which has weakened implementation,” he says.

According to him, at this stage, Vision 2030 no longer inspires the same national energy it once did.

“It needs to be reviewed, updated and adapted to today’s context. If we are serious about achieving its targets, or any meaningful national transformation, practical interventions are needed, along with stronger accountability and a possible adjustment of timelines,” he adds.

Political analyst Rui Tyitende says Vision 2030 died with the spirit of its founding president, Sam Nujoma.

“It remains stuck in the mud as there has been policy promiscuity for the past 25 years.

We gravitate from one NDP to the next without having achieved structural progress in the socio-economic development of the country,” he says.

According to him, there is no accountability in terms of what went wrong such that meaningful action can be taken.
“Every president that comes changes the goal post even though they come from the same party and follow the same development philosophy”.

Vision 2030 was launched by then president Sam Nujoma on 3 June 2004.

It was a national blueprint aimed at transforming Namibia into a prosperous, industrialised nation where all citizens enjoy a high quality of life.

“The goal of our Vision is to improve the quality of life of the people of Namibia to the level of their counterparts in the developed world, by 2030,” Nujoma says in the foreword of the Vision 2030 document.

At the time, Namibia had 26 years to meet the plan’s ambitious targets, which included reducing the unemployment rate to below 5% and becoming an industrialised, high-income country.

The vision anticipated that manufacturing and the services sector would together account for 80% of the country’s gross domestic product, and that at least 70% of total exports would be processed goods.

However, 21 years after its launch, labour expert Herbert Jauch says Namibia is far from achieving these objectives.

“We are nowhere close to meeting the goals of Vision 2030 – especially in terms of industrialisation and reducing unemployment,” Jauch says.

He cites the latest census figures, which show an unemployment rate of 54%, the highest on record. When Nujoma launched Vision 2030, the country’s unemployment figures stood at 30%.

“When you look at that, it’s clear that we have not made progress on industrialisation and job creation,” he says.

Jauch attributes this failure to the country’s economic policy direction.

“Namibia relied heavily on foreign investment and did not make deliberate efforts to restructure the economy, particularly the legacy of colonial economic policies,” he says.

He stresses that changing the structure of the economy must be a deliberate and strategic effort.
“The processing of raw materials should have taken place in Namibia, especially after the launch of Vision 2030 over two decades ago,” he adds.

BLAME ON COVID-19

Former prime minister Nahas Angula says some objectives of Vision 2030 could not be attained because the country experienced severe droughts, floods and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“To get to Vision 2030 we also had to go through economic recessions and when you have an economic downturn you cannot invest in productive assets, you have to put down the fires, paying civil servants and so on,” he says.

He says, for instance, in the last term of former president Hage Geingob, a lot could not be done because of severe drought in 2019 and the outbreak of Covid-19 in Namibia in early 2020.

“Much could not happen and it even forced us to go to the World Bank to borrow and we are allergic to borrowing from the World Bank but we were forced to go there,” he says.

Former finance minister Helmut Angula says Vision 2030 is still attainable as some of its objectives are part of NDP6.

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