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Namibia has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world, a by-product of colonialism, apartheid and recent economic policies. To address inequality, the Namibian Government’s Namibian Tax Consortium (NAMTAX) identified the need for a universal grant in the form of a Basic Income Grant (BIG), to be financed out of a progressive expenditure tax on non-poor people, in 2002. The concept was so appealing that within two years, four umbrella bodies comprising of churches, trade unions and NGOs set up a BIG Coalition to work for a BIG for all Namibians. To demonstrate such a programme’s viability, the Coalition initiated a BIG pilot project in Namibia’s impoverished Otijvero-Omitara region in January 2008 for a period of 24 months – the first universal cash transfer pilot project in the world. The project is funded through voluntary contributions from the members of the BIG Coalition as well as local individuals and international donors. Following six months of implementation, the Coalition has just released the project’s first assessment report.

The proposal developed by the BIG Coalition is that every Namibian should have a citizenship right to a BIG until she or he becomes eligible for the government pension at 60 years. The level of the BIG should not be less than N$100 per person per month. Given that the Namibian old-age pension is a universal grant for all men and women over the age of sixty, and that the take-up of that is nearly 100%, the BIG should be paid to all those men, women and children under the age of 60. The BIG is an unconditional cash transfer, whereby the recipient can choose how to spend the money. 

The assessment finds that the project has helped bring about:

• a fall in unemployment 
• an increase in household income among all income groups and particularly among poor households
• an increase in children’s school attendance
• a fall in the proportion of underweight children
• improvements in community health and nutrition
• an increase in PLWHA’s access to ARVs
• a fall in economic and poverty-related crime
• an increase  in the availability of economic options for women, making them less dependant on commercial sex work
  

The report concludes that these achievements highlight the multiple advantages of universal cash transfer schemes. According to the BIG experience, such initiatives:

• foster local ownership and through community mobilisation and empowerment
• are affordable, accounting for between 2.2% and 3.8% of GDP in this case
• contribute to growth and GDP by boosting local economic activity
• are more cost-effective than programmes requiring expensive targeting
• contribute to all eight of the Millennium Development Goals
  

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