Must Know: Employment And Economic Overview in Namibia
Namibia is rated among the best countries in Africa for its stability in the economy. The country enjoys a high level of economic stability. Here is a general overview of Namibia’s employment and economy.
An Economic Overview
In 2013, Bloomberg named Namibia the top emerging market economy in Africa, and it came in as the 13th best in the world. In recent years, the government has been taking measures to attract foreign investment, and the World Bank ranked it 101st out of 189 countries in ease of doing business.
Namibia suffers from one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world. This is partly due to the fact that about half of the people working in Namibia do not participate in the formal market economy and instead live in a rural, cashless economy fueled by subsistence agriculture. Official unemployment figures vary, ranging from 25% to 50% of the population, depending on if one includes the large percentage of the population who rely on subsistence agriculture or not.
Currently, more than 200,000 skilled labourers are working in Namibia in addition to a small, well-trained professional and managerial class. The government aims to keep increasing this number in the years to come. It is also pursuing measures to create more jobs and bring more Namibians into the economic mainstream.
Tourism and Services
Namibia’s formal market economy is dominated by the tertiary sector, which accounts for a sizable proportion of the country’s GDP and labour force (64% and 54%, respectively).
18% of the people employed in Namibia are in the Tourism sector. Namibia attracts thousands of tourists each year who visit popular tourist destinations such as the Caprivi Strip, Fish River Canyon, Sossusvlei Nature Reserve, Etosha Pan, and Ai-Ais Hot Springs.
Mining and Industry
Namibia’s industrial sector employs 22.4% of the working population and accounts for 11.5% of the country’s GDP. Namibia’s most important industrial activity is mining. Diamonds are its most profitable export, but supply onshore is dwindling and the costs of mining diamonds offshore are eating into profits. Namibia is the world’s fifth-largest uranium producer. Mining operations in Namibia also extract zinc, gold, and other minerals from the soil.
Other industrial activities mostly have to do with processing Namibian agricultural products and include fish processing, meatpacking, as well as the manufacture of dairy products, pasta, and beverages.
Agriculture
About half of the population depends on subsistence agriculture, the primary sector only makes up about 7.7% of the formal market sector’s GDP and 16.3% of the labour force. At the moment, about 75% of Namibia’s arable land (which only makes up about 1% of its total land area in the first place) is owned by descendants of white settlers in Namibia.
The government is currently pursuing a land reform process with plans to resettle landless native black Namibians. Namibia’s main agricultural products are millet, sorghum, peanuts, grapes, livestock, and fish. The country’s fishing operations are concentrated at Walvis Bay, as it is the country’s only sizeable natural harbour.
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