What Use Are These Development Plans?

Alexactus T Kaure

29 April 2011

column

“To plan is to choose, choose to go forward” – Julius Mwalimu Nyerere Namibia has had five different Director-Generals, with varying degree of experience and expertise in development planning at the National Planning Commission.

Three different National Development Plans also saw the light of day since independence. The fourth one, (NDP4), would soon be crafted and is thus on the way.

The immediate question is: are all these lofty promises contained in those voluminous documents called National Developments Plans (NDPs) taking us closer to the promise land of ‘milk and honey’ or are the plans stuck on the runway of our development agenda? From a purely bird’s eye view one can see that we are indeed bogged down. Thus in the words of the Teacher Nyerere: we are planning but not going forward. And the reasons why we are not making headway are many.

Let’s start with the basic issue here. I don’t want us to get mired into definitional issues but a word or two about what is a national development plan is called for. It is necessary because once we have that, then we can peg the rest of our discussion on it. Experts in development planning would usually define it as a large-scale investment project to develop the infrastructure of a country. It requires central planning and monitoring on a national level and implementation on a micro, local level. Adequate funding from government agencies as well as support from citizens will allow short, medium and long-term goals to be met.

Now the question to pose here is: has there been adequate funding from Government or has there been mishmash between the rhetoric and the reality on the ground? In my view there is a lot of talk and little action from our leaders – all the way from the President, the Prime Minister, down the whole political hierarchy and I will come back to that issue about substance and symbolism in a short while. Suffice here to say that we plan to do one thing then we end up doing something else.

The various development plans promised to do a number of things. The second development plan (NDP 2) for the period 2001 to 2006, for example, was to address sustainable and equitable improvement in the quality of life of Namibian citizens, and NDP3 has the same in objectives in mind. The NDP 2 envisaged a reduction in inequalities in income distribution, with a Gini-Coefficient – an instrument measuring inequalities – targeted to be reduced from 0.67 to less than 0.6 at the end of the 2006 period. The NDP 3 foresees a further reduction of the Gini-Coefficient, further reducing social and economic disparities. The NDP3 also predicted an economic growth at five per cent.

Unfortunately we are not seeing all those promises being realised under the present economic set-up. In a recent paper, Dr Fanuel Tjingaete wrote that: “the yawning inequality gap, proven by the Gini-Coefficient, and even to be seen with the naked eye from a distance is a testimony to our dismal failure to tackle this issue.”

Thus what actually translates on the ground is in direct contrast to all the fanfare that goes into the preparations of these development plans. People are mobilised in the planning process and once that is done, they are then demobilised and depoliticised and the leaders then take over the process and where they lead that process to, no one knows. We are told, for example, that the Second National Development Plan was prepared through wider participation of stakeholders during the various stages of its preparation. I would assume that all the national development plans go through such a process of participation by stakeholders.

It’s thus important that a national plan addresses short, medium and long terms goals. The purpose of the plan is to prioritize for national immediate needs (food, water, housing/shelter education, health-care and other social welfare issues) that should be met but also to predict in the medium and long run, what are larger goals that should be achieved. As it stands now, I doubt if we can even meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (which should be achieved by 2015) and that’s perhaps why our politicians/leaders and some uncritical academics prefer rather to talk about Vision 2030.

The problem here seems to be a lack of communication. Because a communication strategy for a development plan is important for citizens to understand what investments and initiatives are being addressed and implemented throughout the lifespan of the plan. Thus the NPC which is supposed to oversee the develop plans and their implementation failed to set-up an Information Office that will market and publicise the plan and also field questions/suggestions from concerned citizens. Most of our problems could have been comprehensively addressed in the past 20 years or so. But what we are witnessing now is a ‘criminal waste’ of resources by Government. We are thus decades away from meeting our peoples’ basic needs and addressing the scars of poverty, inequality and unemployment. And yet Government supports a bloated military budget, bailing-out ailing/failed parastatals and turns a blind eye to official corruption. Thus NDP4 will come and die like the others.

AllAfrica – All the Time