National Strategic Development Plan 2012/13 -2016/17

This National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) recognises, as a point of departure, the need and urgency for Lesotho to radically transform its economy.
For the period 2012/13 to 2016/17, this Plan will serve as an implementation strategy for the National Vision 2020. It builds on the foundation set by the earlier planning documents including the Poverty Reduction Strategy and the Interim National Development Framework. The Vision is that: “By the year 2020 Lesotho shall be a stable democracy, a united and prosperous nation at peace with itself and its neighbours. It shall have a healthy and well-developed human resource base. Its economy will be strong, its environment well managed and its technology well established.”
To achieve the National Vision goals and to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, the NSDP strategic goals will be to: (i) pursue high, shared and employment creating economic growth, (ii) develop key infrastructure, (iii) enhance the skills base, technology adoption and foundation for innovation, (iv) improve health, combat HIV and AIDS and reduce vulnerability, (v) reverse environmental degradation and adapt to climate change, and (vi) promote peace, democratic governance and build effective institutions.
In order to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable, the strategy plans to: (i) promote the production of high value crops and livestock products, (ii) improve quality livestock breeding, seed production capacity and access to farm machinery as well as facilitating the development of viable distribution and marketing systems, (iii) improve quality livestock breeding, seed production capacity and access to farm machinery as well as facilitating the development of viable distribution and marketing systems, (iv) transform agricultural institutions and enhance capacity of farmers through effective training, transformation of extension services and focused agricultural research that is aligned with training and advisory services and (viii) promote household food security programmes, encourage the use of appropriate market mechanisms to manage market risk, reduce stock theft, protect animal and plant health and climate change proof the sector to reduce vulnerability and minimise risks.
Regarding the reduction of rural poverty, this Plan targets the attainment of 50,000 private sector jobs and long-term GDP growth of 5% per annum, which will double the size of our economy every 16 years. The key strategies for creating high and shared growth are: (i) mobilisation of domestic and foreign savings and improving the investment climate, (ii) promoting economic diversification, (iii) improving quality and competitiveness of the labour force, (iv) facilitating technology transfer and partnerships for research, (v) building minimum infrastructure platform, especially to link production centres and markets and to facilitate external trade and (vi) promoting global integration and trade, and (vii) development of the private sector.
To enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the objective of the Strategy is to exploit regional and international markets, predominantly in labour intensive export industries. This will be complemented by identifying niche opportunities in the domestic market and by building linkages between foreign and local firms, in order to maximise domestic content of production as well as linking to global industrial and marketing chains. The key strategic objectives are to: (i) enhance productive capacity and increase exports, (ii) diversify export markets by taking better advantage of regional and other unexploited international market opportunities and negotiating better market access, (iii) improve investment and trade promotion, (iv) develop the minimum infrastructure platform for trade, (v) enhance consumer protection, (vi) increase trade in services, and (vii) consolidate policies and strengthen institutional support and coordination. In addition, the strategy will focus on developing water harvesting capacity and distribution networks to industry, households, other institutions and the region. Creation of water reserves for national water security will also be taken into consideration.
To increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the strategy plans to reverse environment degradation and adapt to climate change. To achieve this, there is need to: (i) reverse land degradation and protect water sources through integrated land and water resource management, (ii) improve national resilience to climate change, (iii) promote biodiversity conservation, (iv) increase clean energy production capacity and environment friendly production methods and explore opportunities for carbon trading, (v) improve land use and physical planning as well as increasing densification and ring fencing towns to avoid human encroachment on agricultural land and other fragile ecosystems, (vi) improve the delivery of environmental services, including waste and sanitation and environmental health promotion, and (vii) improve coordination, enforcement of laws, information and data for environmental planning and increase public knowledge and protection of the environment.
In the context of governance, the implementation excellence will also be built through ensuring local ownership of the Plan by all stakeholders, effective mobilisation of resources and development of timely and robust monitoring and evaluation systems.