High Schools Debate Competition
Youth debate the relevance of foreign aid towards state projects

Final Debate

Conscious Citizens is an independent platform open for dialogue collaboration with Namibian individuals and organisations. A variety of teams were rigorously engaged over three days debating on various topics. Some of the topics dealt with secluding state funded scholarships and bursaries for public schools only and even creating a Ministry of born frees. The Debate attracted over a hundred Namibian youth from high schools in windhoek the regions and one international team from South Africa. Participating schools were as follows:

• Waldorf International School teams (Khomas)

• Windhoek High School Teams (Khomas)

• A.  Shipena Secondary School Teams (Khomas)

• PK Devilliers Secondary School teams (Karas)

• Swakopmund Secondary School teams (Erongo)

• Okakarara Secondary School teams (Omaheke)

• South African High School team (International)

• Jan Mohr Secondary School team (Khomas)

• Khomas High Secondary School team (Khomas)

• Onawa Secondary School team (Omusati)

• DHPS (Khomas)

The Winners

The Final debate was on a motion titled: “This house would reject foreign aid and impose tax to fund state projects instead”.

The two teams that made it to the finals were Namibia and South Africa. The South African team argued for the motion stating. The team argued that developing countries are being exploited by institutions like the International Monetary fund and the World Bank. The reason they gave was that developing countries are falling into huge debt traps as a result of loans towards state projects. Hence the need to reject this approach as it garners more harm than good.

Namibia vehemently opposed the proposal. This team maintained that foreign aid in the form of humanitarian aid is needed for developing countries. This way crisis such as drought for instance can be controlled. Many countries are unable to cope and impose tax on citizens, who are already to poor to fund such crises. This is why according to the Namibian team it does more harm to these countries.

Rebuttals from South Africa maintained that humanitarian aid is not necessarily the same as foreign aid. The recipient does not have a choice. Humanitarian aid involves the notion of human rights, whilst foreign aid towards state project is just an economic transaction. Namibia in rebuttals maintained their point without really substantiating with any further arguments, hence losing the debate to South Africa.