Date: 2024-03-28 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021294 | |||||||||
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Burgess COMMENTARY The image above reminds me of work I did in Namibia for the United Nations immediately after the country's Independence in February 1990. I was recruited for the work by David McAdams who was the first UNDP Resident Representative for the newly independent country. I was part of a three person team tasked with helping the new Namibian Government ... specifically the National Planning Commission ... to prepare the First Development Plan for the newly independent country. Our team assignments were (1) Dr. Korpinen, our team leader from Finland would coordinate with the New President (Sam Nujoma) and his close advisors, (2) Dr. Sarr, an expert from the Economic Commission for Africa, would coordinate with the heads of the key ministries, and (3) I would pull together a portfolio of projects and programs that were priorities to be financed and implemented over a five year time period. I was expected to obtain the key critical information from the staff of the ministries, and organize it inro a report suitable for a financial presentation. Sepcifically, the purpose of this work was to submit the plans to potential donor nations at a UN Pledging Conference to be held in New York during the upcoming summer and obtain critical financial support for the new nation. Getting this work done in the time frame available was a challenge. I was helped by the availability of a FoxPro database system on my PC (personal computer) and some knwledge of how to use the software. This proved extremely valuable in the closing hours of the work when people at a high level asked us to reduce the number of projects from over 400 to around 60. Without the database system this would have been impossible, but by merging multiple projects into programs we were able to accomplish what was needed overnight. The pledging conference ws a great success and over $700 million was pledged by donor countries ... a large amount for a country with a quite small population of around 1.3 million at the time. This was not the end of my Namibian saga. Three months after the pledging conference, I was called back to Namibia. While there had been pledges of financing, no country had actually delivered on their pledges. I became the Acting Coordinator working for the Namibian Planning Commission to sort out the problem. I concluded very quickly that the core problem seemed to be that none of the potential donors had actually been formally requested by the Government for the donors to deliver on their pledges. I drafted a formal letter to be sent from the Decretary General (SG) of the Planning Commission to every donor that had pledged at the New York Conference. The SG was very concerned about signing the letters. I suggested that if it turned out to be a mistake, he should fire me very publicly ... but it seemed to me to be a risk worth taking. The letters were signed, and hand delivered to the various Embassies round Windhoek during the evening ... a Friday. Next day, Saturday, the Planning Commission was deluged with donor responses ... and we rapidly set up a process for getting funds mobilized and into effective use. It had never bothered me very much that a good procedure from the perspective of USAID (USA) or DFID (UK) or SIDA (Sweden) or JICA (Japan) was going to be a huge problem for a recipient or beneficiary country. We found ourselves attempting to conform with the all the different procedures of around 50 different donors. We did it because we had to ... but it was a huge amount of work. The people involved from most all of the donor countries wanted to be helpful, but all were constrained by their own government processes and procdures. Some of the procedures were difficult to handle. Most countries wanted the financial information to be converted to their own currency ... a reasonable demand, but not super easy to satisfy. Again, a database procedure helped get this matter under control. Japan was a major donor, but they had a required that all goods they were financing and coming from abroad had to be delivered in Japanese ships. Namibia needed food ... grain ... that was available in Zimbabwe, a landlocked nation not far from Namibia, at a good price. Japan bought a trucking company, purchased the grain in Zimbabwe, and delivered the grain to Namibia on these Japanese owned trucks. This was a very creative waay of satisfying a legel requirement in a very productive and timely manner. During this work I was extremely disappointed by the lack of engagement by the United States. I was also disappointed in the interventions (or lack of interventions) by both the World Bank and the IMF. At this time, Namibia was not a member of either the WB or the IMF, but it was likely to go forward quite rapidly. Staff representing the WB and IMF attended meetings in Namibia and offered advice. I was shocked by some of the advice that was offered ... as was the Namibian Minister of Finance. This was something of a wake-up call for myself and perhaps explains why more than a few governments around the world get into financial difficulties. Peter Burgess | |||||||||
Some of Namibia's past
Early in the 20th Century Namibia was a German Colony. After the 1st World War it became a League of Nations administered territory. Following the 2nd World War, South Africa administered Namibia, until independence in 1990.
Precolonial History of Namibia Namibia has passed through several distinct stages over the years. If history is a subject you enjoy, you'll definitely enjoy discovering more about this country's past. At first glance the history of Namibia is relatively recent, however this is partly due to the fact that the pre-colonial history was never written down, but there is plenty archaeological evidence that shows that people inhabited Namibia at least 25,000 years ago. Namibia is a diverse country of hunter gatherers, traditional pastoralists, subsistence and commercial farmers, traders, miners and fisherman belonging to a variety of language and cultural groups. Namibia History: The Scramble for Africa Arguably the oldest inhabitants of the region are the Bushmen or San People, evident from the rock paintings and engravings at places in Damaraland like Twyfelfontein and the Brandberg. Today an estimated 35,000 Bushmen live in Namibia, with only a few of them continuing their historical and traditional ways of life. The Bushman share some linguistic features (such as the clicks) with the Damara and Nama peoples who established themselves in the area after them. Herero and Himba are the other distinctive cultures. The Herero can be see in flamboyant Victorian-style dresses and the semi-nomadic Himba are famous for covering themselves with otjize, a mixture of butter fat and ochre, which gives their skins a reddish tinge. The Owambo live in and around the northern parts of the country where farming is good and they can fish in the shallow waterways. Namibia owes much of history to the Europeans The first European to travel to namibia was the Portuguese Diogo Cao in 1485, who stopped briefly at the Skeleton Coast and raised a limestone cross there, on his exploratory mission along the west coast of Africa. This cross is nowadays known as Cape Cross and its historical importance is almost superseded by being home to a colony of over 100 000 Cape Fur Seals. The next significant visitor was Barholomeu Dias who stopped enroute at Walvis Bay and Luderitz on his way around the Cape of Good Hope. The Namib Desert was a formidable barrier and neither of these Portuguese explorers went very far inland! The next important stage of Namibian History, was in 1793 when the Dutch Authority took control of Walvis Bay as it was a good deep water harbour. When the United Kingdom took control of the Cape Colony in 1797 they also took over Walvis Bay. Namibia owes much of its most recent history to the infamous ‘Scramble for Africa’ that resulted in the 1878 British Annexation of the land surrounding Walvis Bay Harbour, the Afrikaner ‘trek boers’ escaping to the Cape Colony to the south and the proclamation in 1884 by Bismarck, of the protectorate of German South West Africa. During the First World War the South African forces gained control of German South West Africa and following the Treaty of Versailles continued to administer the areas as South West Africa. Resolution 435 of the United Nations in 1989 finally resulted in a peaceful independence for the Namibia people in 1990. See original article: https://www.rhinoafrica.com/en/destinations/namibia/facts-and-information/history/77538 |