By Fifi Rhodes
The National Budget of N$60 billion is out. Many arguments focus around it. Many still analyze it with breakfast upon breakfast, from luncheon to late night dinner meetings, while others still cry foul about it. It is there, and I also know there will be many mismanaged reports at the end of the day. Before it happens let me plead with receivers of this moola to put it to good use.
Try to help young people to become farmers. Rather resettle young people with the will to become farmers before resettling people just for the sake of resettlement.
All of us want land but it is the land that must provide for us in the long run. So give the land to the young generation “would-be farmers” to work and give them a daily helping of good food.
Please understand me right. I know that agriculture is not glamorous. I was there, believe me.
I grew up on a farm and I worked very hard but it was not my farm.
Real agriculture suffers from entrenched negative perceptions. In the minds of many African youths, especially here in Namibia, a farmer is someone like their parents, doing backbreaking labour in the fields and getting little to show for it.
Nonetheless, agriculture is the engine driving many African and world economies. If it were to get the same political support and financial investment as the mining sector, Veterans Affairs or Defence, agriculture would be capable of providing more decent jobs and filling millions more stomachs with nutritious meals.
The African Union has defined the immediate future around agriculture as the main force in social and economic transformation of the continent as it was widely published in African agriculture magazines.
My solutions include boosting rural development through a chain of activities that add value to agricultural products, providing necessary infrastructure to stem urban migration and empowering women and youths to run small businesses.
While watching and listening to President Hifikepunye Pohamba on television recently on the Kalimbeza rice project, my thoughts ran wild that innovations in agriculture could unlock vast employment opportunities. That small rice sector of 40 hectares of the 200 hectares alone has the potential to employ many of the young people who enter the job market each year. More land was given to government over the last two years along the Zambezi and Kwando rivers and Lake Liambezi in the Zambezi Region that can be put to good use. know government did a lot but in Zambezi the land is still lying idle.
With financial support and training programmes, young rice and horticulture farmers could boost rice and vegetable production and add value to it. With so many people without a job, the rice and horticulture sector in Kalimbeza and Ogongo, in Omusati Region, is a golden opportunity to provide jobs.
Many of our senior leaders, in the past, have expressed alarm over the growing youth unemployment. There were issues raised in 2010-2012, when the youth unemployment was called a “time bomb.” especially in the 19 to 24-year-old age group, a figure that is expected to double by 2030 according to population experts.
I know agriculture could potentially provide enough food and jobs if given the right priority this time around.
According to an AU report, increased focus on agriculture could enhance productivity, reduce food prices, increase incomes and create employment. Young people’s involvement in this process is crucial.
Although farming is now often done by the elderly, the profession’s requirements for energy, innovation and physical strength make it ideally suited for those in the 18 to 34-year-old age range and above that is the mature young, to be resettled on productive farms and virgin farm land.
Over the years Africa’s agriculture especially Namibia’s, has travelled a bumpy road. Obstacles have included the global economic crisis, food price hikes, climate change, poor harvests, and poor storage facilities during times of plenty, like now.
The result has been the failure of agriculture to generate high job numbers and make a big dent in poverty. A robust agricultural sector promotion from our tertiary institutions of education is necessary for sustained economic growth and high-paying jobs. Making it a reality is a major task for the next 10 to 20 years, but we must try and change the game now! – Eewa