Ranjeni Efraim

Namibia as a developing country has more that needs to be worked on and enhanced for the dream of industrialisation, and moving towards the coherent development of our country. For the country with vast resources and minerals, industrialisation is still in the dim, a few years to the most-awaited vision, Vision 2030. 

The notion is seemingly on a snail’s speed, development factors illustrate. Does the optimism remain the stalwart to the development of a country like Namibia? Development factors such as roads infrastructure, hospitals, education, employment, food security and the general development of our country are displaying a boring mood come 2030, eight years from today. The Vision 2030 envisaged with emphasis to the Republic of Namibia and to the world that job creation and labour-intensive strategies need to be aspired to for development. 

The significance of industrialisation to our country is that its principles and their coordination are echoed dearly in the 2030 vision, a living document. 

The prominent American economist, Professor Jeffry Sachs, stepped on many people’s toes when he indicated to the world and particularly Africa, and to narrow it down more to Namibia, on why they remain underdeveloped and poor. Most African countries have a system, but they need new systems. 

A system has to be lodged in a principle of human dignity in the universal declaration, passion to the principle of sovereignty, and equally a principle to human rights, Sachs pointed out.  

His analysis sits in the deadline of the Namibian Vision 2030, and unfolds the industrial policy of Namibia. 

The analysis of Sachs is not a mere statement, but an agitation to mobilise contextuality and allegiance of our industrialisation script. 

The industrialisation policy of our country firmly coerced all people across the country with the hope for determination and eagerness on how possibly the country will realise the vison and drive a goal towards a living phenomenon of production and orchestrated strategy to job creation, which will ultimately arrest poverty in Namibia. 

Industrialisation, supposedly, should give an appreciation to the robotic revolution and urge our country to work with enthusiasm from the 4th Industrial Revolution. 

The characteristics of these goals do have a kin relationship to the most and well-known National Development Plan (NDP). 

However, their mitigation ought to have been critically taken under the lens because their manifestation to industrialisation are unique, and this would manufacture the total failure of many developmental goals, and disrupt the strategic goal of Vision 2030. 

The difference between the industrial policy and macro-economic policy convenes one goal in their entirety to develop our country. 

They literally do not put a threshold on their pivotal determination towards the Namibia we all want, a country where development is in terms of industrialisation as a concept to labour consumption economy and poverty alleviation.

The leverage of our resources need to be consistent with the bar at which the country aims to go. Industrialisation must be vested into the upbringing and stretching of our democratic structure to greater heights, not only in our country, but far more beyond Africa to market the sovereign standard of our country and display the torch of Namibia. 

The level to which our macro-economic goals are is to converge with the general development in a core base of our economic upliftment and loopholes of poverty and the under-looked industrial development sector.

Former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela’s words of economic mobilisation was that “our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity, believe in justice, strengthening its confidence in nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all”. Madiba did not just speak to South Africans, but in literal fact to African countries, and Namibia is not an exception. 

His words rings volumes to the industrial revolution for our country to provide broad theoretical attention to countries such  as ours. The industrial policy of our country gives frivolous attention to our Vision 2030, for because eight years to that destination, much is still behind the implementation room. 

This is not an impressive message. It’s a very sad outlook, detailing a sad message, to which the glorious life for all is not just a profound dream, but a wish for all Namibian aims to achieve, and industrialisation and economic growth should rally for. 

The IMF declared three years ago that countries across Africa have a financial gap of over US$400 to US$500 billion a year. This is a declaration of a looming crisis in the financial sectors of Africa; and to serve basics such as food, water and health.  

This does not serve as a challenge to a country with a vision and noble goal with mass resources for its development and uplifting the industrial sector as a whole.