22 Mar 2018

Vice President, Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi says the belief that poverty cannot be eradicated is no longer acceptable.

“Moreover, no levels of poverty should be tolerable in any of our societies,” said Mr Masisi when officially closing a two -day international conference on poverty eradication on Wednesday

Mr Masisi said expenditure on social assistance programmes needed to be correlated with the outcomes to ensure efficiency in the use of resources.

The Vice President said Botswana had benefited tremendously from this conference, and that the outcome document would assist in effective implementation of, as well as introspection on,poverty eradication programmes.

“It is a happy coincidence that this historic conference comes at a time when Botswana is finalising her national poverty eradication strategy.

He explained that the theme of the conference “Leave No One Behind in the Fight Against Poverty’’, was in consonant with Botswana’s National Vision 2036 as well as successive National Development Plans, all in accordance with the tenets of the UN’s Agenda 2030, and the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063.

He said he was happy because the discussions were conducted in a professional and systematic manner and that the outcome was an assortment of practical recommendations, which should be useful to participating countries in conceiving or reviewing their poverty eradication programmes and initiatives.

He expressed gratitude to all the guests, particularly the ministers and international speakers, for their contribution to the success of the conference.

He also thanked United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Botswana for its technical support and financial backing to make the conference a success as well as the co-hosts being the government of Botswana, through the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration.

Mr Masisi also extended gratitude to the poverty eradication beneficiaries who showcased their products at the conference adding that their products were testimony to what the government of Botswana had done in taking people out of poverty.

Meanwhile, the conference came up with a number of recommendations which were based on five key elements of definition and measurements, policies and strategies, institutions/structures, global/international and monitoring.

Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Eric Molale stressed the need to move from change ( mindset) to transformation.

He told delegates that the issue of poverty eradication should be addressed in a holistic manner.

One of the recommendations is need to addresss challenges  of people/groups left behind and facing multiple and interconnected vulnerabilities that go beyond income poverty, such as financial exclusion, economic exclusion, political exclusion, vulnerability to climate related shocks, exclusion from access to natural resources and others.

Minister Molale explained that among the groups left behind that needed prioritisation by governments, particularly in Africa, but also in other continents, was the youth and particularly women and girls.

He said failure to address issues of unemployment, access and quality education and skills, empowerment, health, participation in political processes and others, will further disfranchise them and potentially lead to political instability.

He said policy makers needed appropriate tools that could help policy developers.

These include amongst others, the multi-dimensional poverty index but also perception surveys, stakeholder’s consultation and others that can provide information on the population and groups left behind and the type of deprivitisations that they may suffer including rights that remain unfulfilled.

Minister Molale said there was also need to nurture a culture of great use of data to inform appropriate and high impact interventions and policies and the innovations that these required.

Regarding policies and implementations, Minister Molale explained that there was need to embed the principle of Leave No One Behind (LNOB) into policies and deliver results for the citizens as well as the need to design and implement effective assistance redistribution policy.

He said participating countries had the opportunity to do LNOB audits, review their policy frameworks through the lens of the LNOD principle, adding that in order to access these, countries had the right interventions in critical domain of change.

Regarding global/regional partnership for local institutions, Minister Molale said the conference also recognised that LNOB was not only a national agenda, but also an international one, where global and regional cooperation and multilateral, global and regional institutions such as the AU, played a critical role in addressing across-countries inadequacies.

He explained that more action and cooperation was necessary in areas such as trade, tax heavens and tax regimes to stop the global race to the bottom, share of the tax burden more fairly and promoting fairer remuneration systems of different factors of production particularly labour and capital. Ends