A look at Lesotho government and NGOs' economic empowerment programs with respect to rural poverty reduction

Abstract

This study examined ongoing economic empowerment programs that are being implemented by both government and NGOs in rural areas of Lesotho. The key objectives were to gain some insight into major government and NGO poverty reduction programs that target or at least include the rural poor, and to establish the challenges encountered by the benefactors in executing their poverty reduction efforts. A qualitative approach involving interviews was utilized to collect data from a sample of six government ministries and six NGOs. The study revealed that various economic empowerment programs were being implemented throughout the country. The main challenges faced by the government and NGOs in their quest to assist the rural poor were constrained resources, inadequate cooperation and/ or interference from political leadership, and the insufficient enthusiasm of target groups.

Mainstreaming youth policy in Zimbabwe – what role for rural youth?

“…Evidence of this interference was most notable when it came to shortlisting or selecting beneficiaries for funding or training programs. In Lesotho, interference from political leadership was also found to be a problem incapacitating poverty reduction programmes (Hapazari & Hapazari, 2019). In the case of Zimbabwe, the ZANU PF party was equally blamed during the interviews for demanding that its loyal followers be given all the opportunities.…”

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“…The overall high literacy rate in Lesotho of around 90% probably means that successive governments have made efforts to provide education to their people [ 3 , 4 ]. Nonetheless, the country faces dwindling local market due to entrepreneurs and skilled labour scarcity [ 5 ]. Lesotho currently has high youth unemployment rate of about 45 to 50% [ 6 ], resulting in poverty and economic stagnation [ 7 , 8 ].…”