Established in 2004 as a United States Government corporation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) mission is to reduce poverty by supporting sustainable, transformative economic growth in developing countries that create and maintain sound policy environments. MCC is designed to support innovative strategies and to ensure accountability for measurable results.
The current MCC Compact with the Republic of Namibia aims to reduce poverty through economic growth in the education, tourism and agriculture sectors. As part of the tourism component of the Compact, the Conservancy Support (CS) Activity aims to develop the capacity of 31 communal conservancies to attract investments in ecotourism and capture a greater share of tourism‐generated revenue in Namibia. As part of the Agricultural component of the Compact, the Indigenous Natural Products (INP) Investment will assist Producer and Processor Organizations (PPOs) to improve their volume, quality, and value-added products, in addition to their organizational and business capacity.
As part of these activities, NORC has been contracted to implement a Conservancy Support and Indigenous Natural Products Household and Organisational Survey. The specific objectives of this survey project are to conduct a baseline survey for the CS/INP Sub-Activities in selected conservancies and PPO coverage areas and to produce cleaned data sets that cover households and communities affected by the CS/INP Sub-Activity. The data coming out of this survey are intended for baseline and longitudinal project monitoring. In addition data will be used for an evaluation of the CS and INP sub activities (evaluation team not yet chosen). Of particular interest are effects on household income levels and their relationship to the interventions.
Work under this three year contract began in September 2010 with the development of a multi-modal data collection methodology and sampling plan for approximately 1,500 household interviews in rural Namibia. Data collection field work, including questionnaires, focus groups, and key informant interviews will be carried out by NORC in collaboration with our local subcontractor, Survey Warehouse, and begins in 2011.