Swaziland

• Swaziland
• Economy of Swaziland
• Poverty in Swaziland

Government policy

Objective of LUSIP

Project area

Rationale of LUSIP

Approach

Beneficiaries

Irrigation system

Timetable

Project cost

Cost Benefit Analysis

Financing

Resumé

Poverty in Swaziland

With an annual GNP of US $ 1,440 in 1997, Swaziland’s per capita income is among the highest in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Swaziland also performs well in terms of several important indicators of human welfare, such as immunization or literacy rate much better than most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, there are disturbing anomalies which raise concerns about the ability of large proportions of Swaziland’s population to obtain a basic standard of living. These are for instance:

• Survival prospects for Swazis are close to those of many countries whose per capita income are much lower;
• Farm sizes, investment levels and productivity on Swazi commercial farms are far higher than on the smallholder farms from which the majority of rural households earn livelihoods;
• Swazi communities identified between 53 to 80% of the local populations as poor;
• Swaziland’s HIV/AIDS infection rate is one of the highest in the world, rolling back advances in household welfare and capacity building investments;
• The changes in South Africa have led to large declines in the regional demand for Swazi migrant labour and in foreign investment flows to Swaziland.

Summing up, indications are that the average picture of wealth and social achievement in Swaziland obscures significant inequality, poverty and deprivation.