Namibia’s rapid urbanisation has resulted in the mushrooming of informal settlements, which in turn puts pressure on infrastructure and the provision of basic services in urban areas.
The Namibia Statistics Agency’s statistician general, Alex Shimuafeni, made these remarks when he was briefing the media about the Namibia Urban Land Statistics Bulletin held on Tuesday in Oshakati.
Namibia can broadly be divided into three land classes: state land, communal and commercial agriculture land.
State land can further be subdivided into broad classes of parks, restricted areas and urban land.
In 2018, it was estimated that urban land, excluding the expanded city boundary of Windhoek, accounted for about 1% of the total landmass or 795 244 hectares.
He said the provision of land and basic services, inadequate housing, lack of land tenure security resulting in mushrooming of informal settlements, and inadequate basic urban infrastructure and lack of capacity are some of the challenges.
“The NSA produced the first land statistics booklet in September 2018. This was the first step to regularly publish land statistics generated through the national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI),” he said
He stated the plan has not gone well due to the unwillingness of some key data custodians to fully participate in the NSDI government initiative.
Shimuafeni added despite this challenge, the urban land statistics bulletin is a continuation of the 2018 land statistics booklet and provides a summary of available urban-zoned land in nine out of the 14 regions of the country.
The emphasis of the publication is mainly on residential land, while also accounting for other urban land uses.
“In terms of town planning cadastral data, NSA could only manage to acquire data from nine regions between November 2020 and February 2021,” he stated.
He added the remaining five regions of Hardap, //Kharas, Khomas, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa are expected to be covered during the window of November 2021 to February 2022.
Shimuafeleni indicated that land-use changes continuously; the statistics they have provided are based on the harmonised digital town planning data acquired during the mentioned reference period.
He also said it is important that local authorities move towards the digitalisation of their land records by setting up their geographic information systems to aid in better urban land management, spatial planning and national reporting.
– vkaapanda@nepc.com.na