The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Wednesday launched the Namibia Human Development Report (HDR) for 2019 in the capital. The 2019 HDR is themed ‘Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century’. UNDP said national development should be measured not only by income per capita but also by human development using the Human Development Index (HDI). Speaking at the launch, UNDP Resident Representative, Alka Bhatia, said Namibia’s inequalities are more profound in human development but above the average for Sub-Saharan Africa. Namibia continues to be in the medium human development category with an HDI value of 0.645 for 2018, positioning it at 130 out of 189 countries and territories. Namibia’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimation (2013) reveals that 38% of the population (963 000 people) are multidimensionally poor while an additional 20,3% are classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty (514 000 people). “Between 1990 and 2018, Namibia’s HDI value increased from 0.579 to 0.645, an increase of 11,3%. From Sub-Saharan Africa, countries which are close to Namibia in 2018 HDI rank and to some extent in population size are Botswana and South Africa, which have HDIs ranked 94 and 113 respectively,” Bhatia said. She stated that Namibia’s HDI for 2018, however, when the value is discounted for inequality, falls to 0.4, a loss of 35,3% due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices. “The Human inequality coefficient for Namibia is equal to 33,6%,” Bhatia noted. The share of national income received by the top 10% is highest in South Africa (65% in 2014) and Namibia (64% in 2015), while the bottom 40% received 4% of national income in both countries. “Every society has a choice about the level and kind of inequality it is prepared to tolerate,” said Bhatia. -NAMPA