Dimensions and measures to reduce poverty in Botswana

Abstract

This paper brings out the various theoretical measurements of poverty and looks at Botswana's performance in terms of these measures. In terms of income poverty, Botswana's poverty has been declining over time and predictions are that it will continue on the downward trend even though the reduction is not at an adequate pace to achieve the Vision 20I6 goal of zero poverty levels by 20I6. Until the advent of HIV/AIDS, Botswana was doing extremely well in terms of capability poverty as was shown by improving human development indices such as life expectancy, infant mortality, primary school enrollment and illiteracy rates. The health indices have however started to decline due to HIV/AIDS. Botswana has had a system that allows for equal participation of all individuals, even though in practice women and minority tribes are excluded from participation in decision-making processes. The paper also looks at the various poverty reduction programmes and argues that even though some of them have been successful in reducing poverty, there is a need to move away from welfare programmes that created a dependency syndrome of Batswana on government. Lessons learnt from the past programmes are useful for designing better future programmes for poverty reduction.