An Assessment Of Development Aid To Namibia: ‘A Policy And Economic Impact Study (1990-2005)’

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an empirical exploration and analysis of the economic and policy impact of development aid to Namibia since independence 1990. Namibia has been receiving a large amount of economic and humanitarian aid, in the form of financial, technical and material support from both bilateral and multilateral development cooperation partners with a common objective to promote good governance, economic growth and reducing poverty. International aid did not came as a surprise, the independence of Namibia came as a result of an international peace settlement and a large number of nations promised to help Namibia in her process of social and economic development, right from the day of independence. As a result a donor roundtable conference for Namibia was held in Geneva in 1995, and the prepared background document on Namibia’s development needs and priorities was adopted as the First National Development Plan (NDP1) for Namibia by the post independence government and covered the period from 1990-2000. Development assistance to Namibia was based on this and the subsequent Second National Development Plan (NDP2) for Namibia covering the period from 2001/2002 to 2005/2006. However, a large amount of development aid to Namibia was disbursed outside the government’s state revenue fund in the form of free standing technical assistance. A significant amount of aid was channeled as budgetary or balance of payment support, but huge chunk of aid went to the social sectors mainly to education, health and sanitation, housing, water and electricity, infrastructure development and to the transport sector.