Rudolf Gaiseb
The rural youth remain under-represented in governance and policy formulation, despite their significant demographic presence.
This was raised by Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) associate Frederico Links.
“Unfortunately, rural youth are among the most marginalised in society. The issues 10 years later are the same as what we were talking about ahead of the elections in 2014. It has not changed; the situation has not changed,” he added.
The absence of rural youth participation poses a significant challenge to Namibia’s development. It leads to underutilised human capital, worsens socio-economic inequalities, accelerates rural-to-urban migration and results in policies that fail to address youth-specific needs, he indicated.
Links spoke at a public policy meeting in Windhoek yesterday.
Held under the banner ‘Empowering Rural Youth for Development’, the meeting was hosted under the European Union-funded New Voices, New Narratives in Public Policy Discourse project.
The Namibia Statistics Agency’s population and housing census results revealed an increase of 67.4% in the urban population between the 2011 and 2023 censuses, while the rural population increased by 24.8% between the two census years.
It stipulates the share of young people below the age of 15 years in rural areas was higher than in urban areas, with 42.0 and 32.1%, respectively.
“This contrasts with the youth population (15 – 34 years) in urban areas (38.4%) who were more than those in rural areas (29.8%),” it states.
In partnership with IPPR, RuralRise Namibia works to promote rural community development by empowering community projects, mitigating rural-urban migration, and cultivating sustainable growth in rural areas. “I believe isolation is the main cause of the exclusion of rural youth from policymaking and from accessing socio-economic development opportunities. Namibia is a very big country, and a lot of our settlements, our villages and our towns are separated from each other by vast distances. There are a variety of barriers that exist because of the isolation. We have decentralisation issues because of rural levels. We do not just want the government to ensure service delivery within rural communities. We are also talking about corporate and parastatal and other organisations and platforms ensuring there is representation within those levels,” RuralRIse founder Eslien Tsuses underscored.
Also present at the meeting was Landless People’s Movement youth leader Duminga Ndala, who said despite their brilliance on paper, most policies do not speak to the realities of rural youth.
“The mistake policymakers make is to think the young people have the same issues. There are some issues rural youth are faced with that do not apply to those in urban areas. Therefore, it is very important every time we have policy draughting, especially that which affects rural youth, that we have young people from the rural setting so they are given an opportunity to ventilate issues that affect them,” she said.
She emphasised it is important that youth leaders should go on the ground and engage with the youth, and draft policies that speak to their realities as the digital divide makes it difficult to engage them via online platforms.