New poverty and inequality data from Namibia and Tanzania

New poverty and inequality statistics were released this week in Namibia and Tanzania. Are they pointing to different trends across the countries? In Tanzania, a local newspaper reported the Deputy Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs as saying that income poverty at the household level has significantly decreased among Tanzanians over the past six years. A "significant segment" of the local population who could not afford basic needs had gone down to 33.2 per cent - from 35.7 per cent between 2001 and 2007. Studies had also shown that food availability was also rising: some 19 out of 100 people in 2007 were able to cater for their food needs as compared to 16 out of 100 people in 2001. The deputy minister was speaking during an official opening of a three-day consultative meeting on a National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP) and Public Expenditure Review (PER).

Namibia: Almost a third - 28% - of Namibian households are now classified as poor, with 13% labelled as severely poor, according to the latest review of poverty and inequality (reports The Namibian). The most telling result of the new report is its identification of education as a critical factor in addressing poverty. Among Namibians with no formal education, 50% were found to be poor and 26,7% severely poor.The situation shows improvement as education levels rise, with 12.6% of those who finished high school classified as poor and 5.1% as severely poor. The guest speaker at the launch, United Nations Resident Co-ordinator Simon Nhongo, said the new report shows a threefold increase in the number of severely poor households compared to the previous year. This steep rise is however attributed to a change in methodology. Previously, the official poverty line was defined using a household's relative expenditure on food compared to its total expenditure. The new method, which the Bureau says has become more widely used in the SADC region and other developing countries, is called the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) approach.