The need to invest in manufacturing sector in Namibia

The need to invest in manufacturing sector in Namibia

Namibia is ranked second in the human development index after Botswana in the 2010 UNDP report on human development among SADC.  It should be noted that such a ranking have both positive and negative consequences to the ordinary Namibian citizens. Indeed government is happy that it is being seen as doing well but the ordinary citizen will suffer the dare consequences. Such ranking mean that donor funding will be reduced, in fact most of the funds are already reduce because Namibia is middle income country. Namibia is one of the countries in the world with the highest gap in income between the rich and the poor. The government on the other hand is not ready to step and fund activities such as those of prevention for HIV/AIDS at the civil society level.

Namibia GDP has been growing immensely as its large contributor is the mining sector which is equally the lowest in the provision of employment according to the 2008 labour force survey. Currently, the unemployment rate in Namibia is 51.2% making Namibia second lowest after Zimbabwe in the SADC. The case of the matter is that Namibia has an economy growing and on the other hand unemployment is also growing. Youth, women and people living in rural areas are the hard hit by the massive unemployment in Namibia.

Namibia needs to invest more in the manufacturing sector which should be accompanied by the labour intensive approach. What the government is failing to see is that the Chinese who are given free pass to invest in Namibia are not in the manufacturing sector even if they applied to come and invest in the manufacturing sector. Currently, Chinese are in the retails and they export all their cheap products from China to come and flood our markets. Government need to monitor and implement strict rules in order to control these guys before they take over everything. There are flying rumours that government is doing China a favour because of the assistance we receive from them during the liberation struggle dating back to the 1960s. What the government fail to realise is that the interest of our friend (China) had changed. Something needs to be done as a matter of urgent to control these folks before they over run our country.