Namibia: #NamibiaElections2024 – Fact-Checking Opposition Popular Democratic Movement Manifesto

#NamibiaElections2024: Fact-checking opposition Popular Democratic Movement manifesto

The opposition party’s claim that about 22% of the Namibian population experiences acute food insecurity is supported by available data, and their claim that 62% of the working population can be defined as “youth” is mostly correct. The PDM understated the classroom shortage in Namibia, and the figures it quoted on the number of schools without tech infrastructure are misleading. The PDM’s comparison of the maternal mortality rate in Namibia to the rest of Africa is incorrect. The country’s MMR is significantly lower than across the continent, and in fact lower than the global average.

The Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), Namibia’s official opposition party, launched its election manifesto in August 2024.

In the 2019 general elections, the PDM won 16 parliamentary seats, more than tripling its share from 2014 and making it the second-largest party in the national assembly. The ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation won 63 seats, down from 77 in 2014.

If voted into power in the November 2024 election, the PDM has vowed to address the lack of housing, high unemployment rates, the rising cost of living, and corruption, issues it says have “regrettably become normalised” under the Swapo government.

To support this statement, the party’s manifesto makes several claims about the state of affairs in Namibia. We checked five of them for accuracy.

(Note: We contacted the PDM for the source of their claims and will update this report with their response.)

The PDM claimed that 22% of Namibia’s population experiences acute food insecurity and attributed the figure to the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA).

Data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) shows that from July to September 2023 around 579,000 people in Namibia were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, which equated to 22% of the population at the time.

The IPC is a tool created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations that classifies food insecurity in 55 countries, including Namibia.

Governments, UN agencies and other actors work together to determine the severity of each country’s food insecurity according to internationally recognised scientific standards.

The IPC projected that the percentage of the population experiencing acute food insecurity would increase to 26% from October 2023 to March 2024. Dry spells, price shocks and unemployment were the main drivers, it said.

Prof Henning Melber is a distinguished researcher who has published extensively on Namibia’s socioeconomic and political environment. He told Africa Check that the figures for July to September 2023 were reasonable, adding that it would be fair to assume that close to a quarter of the Namibian population suffered from food insecurity in 2023.

While 65 deaths per 100,000 live births is lower than 210, the PDM claims Namibia’s maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is higher than the African average, indicating a possible typo. We looked into the available data.

Maternal mortality is the death of a mother during or following pregnancy. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), maternal mortality rates are highest in middle- and low-income countries, which accounted for 95% of maternal mortality deaths in 2020.

According to a 2023 WHO report titled Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2020, Namibia had an MMR of 215 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020.

Even if the PDM were correct that “the rest of Africa” had an average MMR of 210 deaths per 100,000, 215 would not be “substantially higher.” But the reality is the opposite.

The estimated MMR of the WHO Africa region in 2020 was 531.

(Note: The WHO Africa region is not synonymous with the continent of Africa. It does not include every African Union member state.)

Namibia also had a lower estimated MMR than sub-Saharan Africa, as defined by the United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef (536).

Namibia’s MMR was even slightly lower than the global average of 223.

Namibia’s MMR is near the global average and substantially lower than the average for the regions of Africa in which it is included.

The NSA considers people aged 15 to 59 to be of working age. According to the latest census data from 2023, Namibia’s total population was 3.02 million. Of these, 1.7 million were between 15 and 59 years or 34.11% of the total population.

Of the working-age population, 1,030,935 (or 60.8%) were youth between the ages of 15 and 34.

These figures are in line with data from the World Bank, which defines working age as those between 15 and 64. It estimated that youth made up 61% of Namibia’s working-age population in 2023.

By comparison, the global average was 39%. In sub-Saharan Africa, youth made up 75% of the working-age population.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) encompass a wide range of resources and tools, including the internet, computers or other devices, and broadcasting or telephonic tools.

ICT in Namibian schools is described in multiple government policies and acts, and generally refers to schools having internet connectivity, computers or devices like tablets and projectors, as well as electricity to enable access to these.

The claim seems to have originated from a 2022 article in The Namibian titled Only 500 schools have ICT infrastructure. The article attributed the figure to Emilia Nghikembua, head of the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran), who had “hinted that the majority of public schools, in the region of 1,300, do not have access to the infrastructure”.

We asked Nghikembua about the claim, and she directed us to her colleague Helene Vosloo, who said that their data showed that around 456 schools did not have services available, meaning they did not have any “tower or fixed internet connection”.

She directed us to a Cran report which clarified that this number referred specifically to 4G broadband coverage for 2022. For 2024, the report said this had decreased to 339 schools without coverage.

Internet coverage and connectivity

But schools being in an area with internet coverage does not mean they are connected to the internet, and Vosloo explained that many of these schools do not have connectivity because they lack funds or other ICT equipment. Vosloo said Cran did not have this data and referred us to Namibia’s education ministry. We will update this report should they respond to our enquiry.

According to a 2022 Education Management Information System (EMIS) report, 65.6% or 1,288 out of 1,954 schools had “indicated the presence of internet connectivity … including both cable and wireless modes”. In 2023, this number was 1,311 out of 2,004 (65.4%). Schools in rural areas were less likely to have internet connectivity.

Giga, a project of Unicef, aims to map real-time internet connectivity around the world. For Namibia, the tool estimated a similar number, of around 1,300 out of approximately 1,900 mapped schools with connectivity.

But this does not reflect other types of ICT infrastructure. And as has been reported, broader basic infrastructure issues like access to electricity also contribute to the limited availability of ICTs in schools. The ministry reported that in 2023, 217 schools did not have access to electricity. One third of schools also lacked a telephone.

Unicef reports on general access to ICTs in education as part of its education budget briefs for Namibia. These assess whether the country’s education budget will appropriately meet the needs of Namibian children.

The reports indicate that 23% of schools (around 442 schools) had access to ICTs in 2020/21, and this increased to 37.7% (around 737 schools) in 2021/22. But the reports do not distinguish between public and private schools. Despite the increase, the report concluded that access to ICTs in education generally “remained somewhat low for an upper middle-income country”.

While the PDM’s claim refers to the number of schools that have ICT infrastructure, this is different from those that have access to this infrastructure. For example, there is a gap between schools that have the infrastructure for internet through broadband coverage in the area, and those that are actually connected to the internet. We therefore rate this claim misleading.

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The likely source of this claim is a February 2023 article published by The Namibian. It attributes the figure to Sanet Steenkamp, executive director of Namibia’s education ministry.

Africa Check contacted Steenkamp to confirm the figure and ask how it was calculated.

“All our statistics are evidence-based,” she said. “We also continue to construct classrooms annually, however, the growth in regions requires schools and not classrooms. If we could have targeted funding for schools, it would solve problems long term.”

Steenkamp shared two annual statistical reports and an October 2024 press release by the Ministry of Education Arts and Culture (MEAC). But none of these include the 2,837 classroom shortage estimate.

Steenkamp said that the estimate was likely context-dependent and based on projections of the number of classrooms needed for the coming financial year.

However, another estimate is available.

Unicef makes a similar estimate in its education budget briefs. In 2022/23 and 2023/24, Namibia had an estimated classroom deficit of 4,479. Steenkamp told Africa Check that Unicef “get their numbers from us” and that these figures would be the same as the official estimates used by the MEAC.

Unicef also drew attention in these reports to the quality of available classrooms, pointing out that of existing classrooms, “over 2,123 (7.8% of total) are traditional classrooms”.

The latest education statistics release from the MEAC supports this. The 2023 EMIS report recorded that there were 28,777 classrooms across the country in 2023. Of these, 2,037 (or 7.1%) were “traditional” classrooms, a category which includes “a variety of structure types, such as stick-and-mud, metal-sheet and tents”.

This report is produced as part of the work of a Namibian election coalition. Ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2024, the coalition aims to help voters critically engage with information and make informed decisions in the voting booth.

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