The region continues to be faced by challenges such as; inequality, poverty, weak domestic resource mobilisation, a growing informal economy and deepening debt crisis. Four countries from the region (Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Botswana) feature in the top ten most unequal countries in the world. While on the other hand at least half of the region’s countries have the lowest human development rankings. The shrinkage of formal sector employment has resulted in a sharp drop in labour organising, thus undermining the capacity of unions to mobilise their membership and opened the unions to aggressive attacks from states on their leadership. The Programme, in collaboration with other Regional and Network Programmes, continues to monitor and advocate against illicit financial flows and push for better regulation and policy reforms to address tax havens, tax evasion and illicit transfers.

The attainment of the right to education and the vision for an enlightened and informed population in the region continues to be stymied by a myriad of challenges including exclusionary and obsolete education systems; insufficient sector financing and declining official development assistance to education; entrenched corruption and unethical leadership; poor learning outcomes and skewed access, poor retention and school survival rates amongst other challenges. The Programme will harness a sharp strategic focus on investing in innovative campaigns and advocacy that seek to expand access to quality education that is fit-for-purpose in the 21st century. Fundamentally, the Programme will support citizen’s own agency and power in demanding for and safeguarding the delivery of quality education and early childhood services through robust transparency and accountability mechanisms and strategies.

Inequalities in access to health remain entrenched. The attainment of health rights for all remains elusive as marginalised populations including the poor, rural communities, women, girls, children, sex workers, and prisoners often struggle to access health. There is insufficient financing to the health sector with most of the budget allocations in SADC countries falling far below the 15% committed to in the Abuja Declaration. In most cases these meagre allocated public resources are siphoned out of the system through widespread corruption in the sector. The programme takes a rights based, people centred approach that seeks to cultivate active citizenship, strengthen citizen agency and participation in health decision making processes at both policy and implementation levels. The idea is to improve transparency and accountability in health by increasing citizen engagement and participation in health governance and resource management.