Interim Evaluation

Rural households have become more involved in identifying priority areas for investment and have begun to contribute towards the costs involved and to manage capital assets supplied by the project.

The Community Development Fund has helped rural Namibians, especially women, to start small income-generating activities such as making bricks, milling grain and baking bread. So too, the Small Stock Seed Capital Fund has enabled households without animals – 70 percent of which are headed by women – to obtain goats, chickens and donkeys leading to improved food security, stronger social status and self-esteem for women and a potential for economic empowerment previously unavailable. Eleven new Veterinary Rural Extension Centres with drug supplies, equipment and trained staff, now reach over a thousand farmers.

The key to success is to place people and the sustainable use of resources at the centre of the development process, rather than the delivery of specific, pre-determined investment options.

Moreover, the rural poor need to secure access to natural resources (land, vegetation and water in particular) as a fundamental pre-requisite to the introduction of sustainable resource management systems.