By Clemens Kashuupulwa
Unemployment has now become a threat to Namibia’s peace, stability and tranquillity with many school drop-outs Increasing every year. On the one hand, persistent unemployment among the youth and women has also led to social evils such as the high rate of crime and HIV/AIDS. A number of youth are now involving themselves in housebreaking, armed robberies, car theft, stock theft and money laundering.
To add insult to injury, teenage pregnancies and sex-workers are also increasing and thereby contributing to the high rate of HIV/AIDS in Namibia. Currently, the unemployment rate fluctuates between 30 percent and 40 percent.
A study conducted in 2000 indicates that “unemployment has been growing since the 1970s despite the fact that Namibia’s economy has only a small labour force of about half a million people”. The study found out that there were about 20,000 people unemployed in 1970 compared to 170,000 people in 1998. This indicates that unemployment in Namibia has increased from 7.7 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 1998.
In 1997, “the economically active population in the country was estimated at 612,618. This was made up of 307,454 men and 305,165 women”. In the broad sense, this indicates that the “unemployment rate was 34.5 percent for the whole country”. This indicates clearly that Namibia’s unemployment is of a structural nature characterized by the limited size of the domestic market, economic dualism and labour market segmentation, declining productivity in agriculture and weak performance of the manufacturing sector.
Despite the aforementioned information, Namibia has put in place a number of policy measures and programmes to encourage local and foreign investment in the country aimed at diversifying productive activities and creating employment opportunities for a fast increasing labour force. Among the policy measures in place are:
– the Affirmative Employment Act No. 29 of 1998 that aimed to enhance participation and integration of previous disadvantaged groups in the society in the labour market and to promote equal opportunity in employment. Now, many women are engaged in construction, agriculture and small business activities;
– the White Paper on Labour Based Works that enable women to engage in the construction of roads in rural areas;
– National Employment Policies for Job Creation and protection of workers;
– the Public Service Act No. 13 of 1995 for establishment management and efficiency of the Public Service and regulation of employment;
– the Employee Compensation Act No. 30 of 1994 as amended by Act 5 of 1995 for the establishment of the Employee Compensation Accident Fund and Accident Pension Fund.
According to the 2001 census results, Namibia’s workforce is dominated by the private and public services that employ 57 percent of all workers. This is followed by Agriculture and Fishing at 25 percent and Manufacturing at 12.3 percent. Namibia lacks skilled employed people. Among the workforce 12.5 percent has no formal education, 44 percent has full or partial primary education and less than 1.0 percent has post-secondary education.
Employment in Namibia goes also with skills both in the private and public sectors. This made a number of people currently unemployed require skills such as computer literacy, accounting and clerical training as most jobs require such attributes as prescribed requirements in the job market.
According to the 2001 census, the overall unemployment rate is 31 percent, and is high for females at 35.9 percent and for males at 26.8 percent. It is very high among the youth, at almost 40.4 percent for those aged 15-19 and 46.9 percent for those aged 20-24 years.
By the year 2010, the unemployment in Namibia will be reduced to 20 percent as the government is committed to:
– promote small and medium scale enterprises;
– provide training in business development and management to both out-of-school and in-school men and women;
– invest in community-based technical institutions for school drop-outs to gain skills;
– provide incentives for self-employment and job creation; and,
– to encourage investors to put up industries.
In conclusion, if Namibia is to reduce poverty accordingly, we need to increase employment and provide skills by expanding production and opportunities for job creation.
Namibia will obviously be successful in establishing a strong industrial sector and excellent manufacturing-based economy by the year 2010.
To bring about this meaningful change the government, as a catalyst for creating a conducive environment for the private sector to flourish together with all stakeholders, will need to shift capital and labour from agriculture and household production to factories and manufacturing operations and thereby to increase the capacity to process primary resources for marketing and consumption.
(Source: Namibia Vision 2030: Policy Framework for National Development Main Document, Government of the Republic of Namibia 2004)
– Clemens H. Kashuupulwa is the Governor of Oshana Region and member of the National Committee on Vision 2030.