About Namibia

In order to understand Namibian Dreams as a project -- our motivations as well as our intentions -- it is necessary to understand a little bit about Namibia. The following is a brief overview of the country's history, with an emphasis on the areas most relevant to the Namibian Dreams project. Much of the below content has been taken from Wikipedia, with the addition of a few personal contributions from Dan and Kathryn.

History

While the most famous inhabitants of Namibia worldwide are undoubtedly the San, or Bushmen, who have occupied various portions of the surrounding region over the course of thousands of years, the largest tribal group is the Owambo tribe. They and their relatives the Kavango tribe inhabit much of the northern portion of the country, having migrated there at some point during the Bantu expansion.

The first Europeans to disembark and explore the region were the Portuguese in 1486. However, like most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia was not extensively explored by Europeans until the 19th century. In the late 1800s it became a German colony and was known as German South-West Africa, to be taken over by South Africa and become simply "South West Africa" some thirty years later. South Africa occupied the colony during World War I and administered it as a League of Nations mandate territory. Following the League's supersession by the United Nations in 1946, South Africa refused to surrender its earlier mandate to be replaced by a United Nations Trusteeship agreement, requiring closer international monitoring of the territory's administration. Although the South African government wanted to incorporate 'South-West Africa' into its territory, it never officially did so, although it was administered as the de facto 'fifth province', with the white minority having representation in the whites-only Parliament of South Africa.

In 1966, a guerrilla group known as the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, the military wing of the South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), launched a war of independence. In 1988 South Africa agreed to end its administration of Namibia, in accordance with a United Nations peace plan for the entire region. The transition to independence started in 1989 but it was only on 21 March 1990 that the country officially claimed full independence.

Namibia's present government, controlled primarily by SWAPO, is currently working towards an agenda called Vision 2030, which is aimed at establishing Namibia as a fully developed nation by the year 2030. Thanks to significant development undertaken by Europeans and then by South Africans prior to Namibia's independence, the country is already among the most developed in the region. However, corruption, tribalism, and a relative lack of money all contribute to concerns held by some that the country will have great difficult realizing the ambitious goals which Vision 2030 encompasses.

Education

Until Namibia's independence, the country's education system was designed to reinforce apartheid rather than provide the necessary human resource base to promote equitable social and economic development. It was fragmented along racial and ethnic lines, with vast disparities in both the allocation of resources and the quality of education offered. The new Government of the Republic of Namibia (GRN) set about to create one unified structure for education administration. Currently, Namibia allocates more than 20% of its national budget to education. This represents six to seven percent of Namibia's total GDP and marks Namibia as one of the three countries with the highest percentage of GDP directed toward education in the world.

In 1998 Namibia instituted a new "learner-centered" curriculum to be used in all schools throughout the country. The Ministry of Education also switched the official medium of instruction from Afrikaans -- a European-inherited language closely related to Dutch -- to English, the intention being to break from the cultural connotations of racial subjugation from the past and to embrace a language deemed to have global significance.

These developments were promising, and various research may be cited that indicates that the changes they have brought about have been mostly positive. Nonetheless, having worked as teachers on the ground for an entire year, Dan and Kathryn have both seen firsthand that the results have been less than perfect. When the majority of a nation's teaching force have been trained according to the old dogma of rote memorization, "learner-centered education" is often little more than a buzzword with almost no connection to the reality that takes place inside classrooms. And when learners in remote regions of the country with little exposure to English books or English television are instructed in broken English by teachers whose knowledge of the language is meager at best (mind you, learners are taught every subject -- math, science, history -- in English), how surprised should we be when they fail to the absorb their lessons?

The results of some studies showing an increase in promotion rates of Namibian learners have been used to support the alleged success of the above policies. While progress is certainly being made, and a gradual increase over time in the number of young, qualified teachers employed by the Ministry of Education is partially to thank, these results are also artificially boosted by recent strict policies capping the number of learners a school is permitted to fail in a given term. There is, without a doubt, still a tremendous amount of work to be done.

HIV/AIDS

Namibia has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates (the percent of people living with the disease) in the world, a much higher rate than the sub-Saharan African region overall (21.3% compared to 7.5%). As of the end of 2003, there were 210,000 people estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in Namibia, or more than one in five adults. Although recent evidence suggests that prevalence may be starting to decline, the epidemic already poses significant challenges to the country, and high levels of unemployment and income disparity may further the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The Government of Namibia established a National AIDS Committee (NAC) in 1990 and is currently implementing the third National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS (2004-2009).

Orphans and Vulnerable Children

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has led to a growing number of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in Namibia. Today, 28 percent Namibian children under age 18 are orphans and/or are considered vulnerable. One in 10 children is living with at least one sick adult. This startling development erodes traditional living arrangements and challenges the survival of many households.

Both orphans and children living with chronically ill adults face serious emotional, social, and economic challenges. They often lag behind other children in meeting their basic needs, for example, owning at least one pair of shoes and two sets of clothes, and having at least one meal per day. Only 41 percent of orphans and vulnerable children have all these basic requirements compared with 54 percent of other children. OVC and other children living in rural areas are far more deprived than children living in cities.