The Official Development Assistance (ODA) analysis is a key development assistance management instrument annually produced by the National Planning Commission (NPC), with this current report being a continuation of this tradition.
The report aims at building some knowledge on volumes, composition, destination and trends of ODA flows in the 2020/21 and 2021/22 fiscal years, and also in a retrospective, to inform development and ODA planning, resource mobilization and allocation strategies in consideration of the currently prevailing development cooperation landscape in Namibia.
The report outlines the sources of ODA available to the Government of Namibia and reviews its alignment with government priorities. Namibia’s stance on development cooperation has always been premised on the Paris Declaration’s principles of effective development co-operation which entails advancing Namibia’s socio-economic priorities in line with her National Development Plans to augment government efforts and aspiration towards Namibia’s industrialisation to improve the well-being of her people.
Since 1990, ODA to Namibia has played and continues to play an important role in supporting national efforts on development and poverty reduction. The nature of ODA has evolved considerably since then, shifting from one largely characterised as humanitarian mainly delivered by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to the one characterised as development focus with the majority of ODA now delivered through the Government of Namibia (GRN).
ODA inflows to Namibia have been volatile notably since 2009, owing to the country’s reclassification to an upper middle-income status. The reclassification has in some ways created assumptions that Namibia’s need for aid is less, despite the prevailing socio-economic challenges such as high unemployment, high-income inequality, poverty, etc. This has resulted in the dwindling flow of ODA to Namibia as some development partners scaled down their support, closed doors and or changed the mode of cooperation.
The highest value of ODA as a percentage of GNI in Namibia was recorded immediately after independence in 1991 at 5.8%. During the past 5 years, ODA as a percentage of the Gross National Product has been below 2%. This demonstrates that Namibia is and was never an aid-dependent country. By definition, a country is aid-dependent when it is unable to deliver basic public services to its citizens without foreign aid. According to the literature on Development Cooperation, a country is aid-dependent when ODA is more than 10% of its Gross National Product (GNP).