THE STORY OF ESWATINI

Sir,

A lot of ground still needs to be covered before Eswatini can safely call herself a ‘First World’ country. Even though a lot of people have grown accustomed to this vision as part of the development discourse in all corners and streets of Eswatini, still a majority of people miss the point that the National Development Strategy (NDS) coined in 1997, is in fact, the country’s First World status vision.

Well-articulated

The purpose of the NDS, which by the way is a well-articulated plan, was to formulate a vision that would provide appropriate strategies for socio-economic development as well as provide a blueprint for the formulation of development plans for equitable allocation of resources. The key macro strategic areas of focus included; sound economic management, economic empowerment, human resource development, agricultural development, industrialisation, research and development, and environmental management.

Development

It is 24 years later and the very same issues still resonate for socio-economic development priorities for Eswatini. It is as if the previous governments simply tossed the NDS aside and ran with their own construed development priorities culminating in a collapse of our economy. Where did government drop the ball? Like many policies and strategies, the country drops the ball when it comes to allocating resources to implement what is written and promised to the nation on paper. A policy or development vision without a serious and dedicated financial commitment is simply a document to be signed and shelved so that it can collect dust in many government ministries.

Here is the other problem, we still have the same officers who still make up a significant part of the government system that is preventing traction towards the promised First World status. There are just a lot of people who are still part of the old governments. Running government should have been a relay race to the First World vision, where the programmes stipulated in the NDS take priority and seamlessly get passed on from one Cabinet to the next.

Implement

That way, government should not really start afresh every five years, it should gain momentum every five years with fresh and new brains to cement and implement the country’s development targets. The story of Eswatini is that every five years, government leaves a huge dent on the country’s finances through their remuneration and exit packages while progress on the NDS suffers. Moving forward, every money spent by government needs serious justification on how it contributes to and enhances the implementation of the First World vision.

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