Namibia

The Omusati Region of northern Namibia is on the margins of what any farmer would consider arable land, with temperatures routinely hitting 40 degrees Celsius or more and rainfall seldom exceeding a pitiful 270 millimeters per year. To make matters worse 83 per cent of the little rain that does fall evaporates as soon as it hits the ground. In a report to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change, the government of Namibia has predicted global warming will cause a temperature rise of ...read more

The NamRights 2010 human rights report for Namibia notes that experience has 'strongly shown' that a systematic disregard for the democracy, human rights and good governance principles, rather than the absence of the law, constitutes 'the biggest root cause of the multitude of the interrelated, intertwined and interdependent civil, cultural, economic, environmental, political and social problems afflicting the Namibian people.' The report covers the period between 10 December 2009 and 10 Dece...read more

Namibia's ruling party overwhelmingly won last weekend's local and regional elections, claiming 92 per cent of constituencies in regional voting, officials announced late last Monday. The South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo), which has ruled Namibia since independence in 1990, won 98 out of 107 constituencies in the regional vote, state broadcaster Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) said.

When Victoire Mpelo fled his native Democratic Republic of the Congo, practising medicine again was probably one of the last things on his mind. Yet, some 10 years later, the doctor is kept busy every day, looking after fellow refugees in Namibia's Osire settlement. Meanwhile, the nearby Osire Secondary School, headed by another refugee, Come Niyongabo from Burundi, is ranked among the top secondary education establishments in the country.

Namibia's land redistribution programme has progressed at a snail'space, with farms not changing hands as fast as government would have wanted. White commercial farmers and inflated prices of land have emerged as a bulwark against much vaunted promises for land. Ongoing flare-ups over ancestral land in cases which have been dramatised by direct defiance of court rulings are only a microcosm of a much bigger problem. The plan by government for blacks to own land is flagging, observers and ana...read more

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