Namibia has concentrated more in the past 20 years on infrastructural development. Roads network, electrification, communication infrastructure ect. All those have been positive developments. However, NOW is the time we must start to concentrate our efforts on two main challenges in our country: poverty alleviation and human resources development.
To address poverty in Namibia requires a hands-on approach suggested by Bishop Kameeta in the Basic Income Grant Initiative.... at least for now. Basic Income Grant will stimulate economic growth in rular areas by providing relatively high cash-flow systems in rural economies and thus encourage more investments in the rural areas. Let the program be piloted for five years at least.
The second challenge of human resources development requires that we continue to appropriate more resourses to education. However, we slightly need to change our approach in that we must encourage the State Owned Enterprises to start investing in the rather risk manufacturing sector but their own areas of interest. For example: NAMPOWER through its accumulated funds can be encouraged to set up electrical equipment factory in Namibia to start manufacturing electric copper wires for wiring in the construction sector, transformers for rural and municipal use, generators parts for domestic use as well as export.
Another example could be that NAMWATER can start to invest in the chemical manufacturing of chlorine for cleaning and bleaching purposes, they can start manufacturing water technology for small-scale desalination, and pumps for drawing underground water etc.
The list is endless about what various SOE can start manufacturing as part of their investment strategies in Namibia. We cannot affort to continue exporting our capital outside for the sake of low-risk high return investment while our country suffer from lack of development. We have to take a bold initiative. That initiative can only succeed if it is state driven and consciously pursued by the government. Foreign investment for economic development in Namibia is a myth.
Now, when factories are available people will receive short courses for them to be able to work there. More money should be dedicated to the research fund so that more and more scientific and technological research could be made in the country. In other words, we should not wait to have so and so number of engineers and scientists before we set up factories in Namibia. Lets use own own money to invest in the manufacturing sector, import expatriates to cover for skills deficit and have a program of exit to have Namibians filling the various positions in the factories.
