This article attempts to seek out how diversification of the economy would enhance stable and viable economic growth in Namibia.
Namibia still desperately needs to improve agricultural production systems and tackle the threats of climate change and uncertainty.
Green hydrogen serves as an alternative, but is not the alpha and omega for employment creation.
The director general of the National Planning Commission and chairperson of the Green Hydrogen Council anticipated that Namibia would create 600 000 jobs through the national green hydrogen strategy.
Growth in the hydrogen sector of the Namibia economy would lead to vast new employment opportunities, but would not be a single source of job creation.
Hence, we should diversify our attentions across all economic sectors.
We are losing major sectors.
AGRICULTURE
Agriculture is the backbone of Namibia. If we lose the agricultural scope we would face famine, and the cost of living would sky-rocket.
Most of the people in Namibia are still employed in the agriculture sector and employment still greatly depends on agriculture.
So, the focus should be on how to increase agriculture output.
The rate of employment would also increase if the government focused on this sector.
Therefore, we should accelerate industrial development and job creation by capitalising on the green hydrogen industry, as well as the sub-sectors of oil and gas, and enhancing agricultural production.
‘UNREALISTIC’
In my view, 600 000 employment opportunities through green hydrogen as stated by the director general within 17 years is unrealistic.
Green hydrogen has many obstacles to navigate to reach its full potential and for communities to enjoy the full benefit of cleaner power, commercial opportunities, and job growth.
There are major obstacles on the path to achieving our green hydrogen economy.
The economics of green hydrogen are challenging today, primarily because the underlying costs, skill, knowledge, and availability of renewable energy sources vary widely.
I support economic transformation through green hydrogen, but we should be realistic with our projections.
Therefore, the development of a green hydrogen economy would impact positively on Namibia’s labour landscape as the country continues to adapt to the fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), while certain jobs would become redundant.
Furthermore, the net difference would be positive, especially considering green hydrogen.
However, we currently do not have all the skills in Namibia to really grow a green hydrogen economy.
But Namibia needs significant investment from foreign or local private companies and the public sector to catalyse growth.
Significant effort needs to be made by an industry to attract investment in addition to driving skills development and policy reviews.
Hence, job creation is likely to be relatively low because of the highly specialised and capital-intensive industry green hydrogen production requires.
Moreover, given the elevated rate of unemployment and the large number of individuals who are experiencing long spells of unemployment, both fiscal and monetary policymakers should be considering a wide array of approaches for promoting job creation.
For this reason, we should not lose focus on other sectors.
BALANCING SECTORS
Balancing all sectors would start boosting Namibia’s gross domestic product (GDP) with exponential growth.
Turning the agricultural sector around would require substantial investment and equal attention to capitalise on the growth opportunities.
Experience from around the world indicates that as Namibia continues to grow, more and more people would migrate from the countryside to cities.
Hence, an inclusive growth strategy needs to include investment in urban infrastructure as well as programmes to increase urban employment.
It is therefore required to build resilience and response mechanisms against adverse events in farming communities and provide social protection for vulnerable groups.
Achieving these objectives requires paying particular attention to poorer and less developed regions that mainly depend on agriculture for livelihood.
Rural poverty in Namibia is about three times higher than urban poverty, and most of the rural poor depend directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihood.
We don’t want to just rely on single sector as a major source of economic activities.
We want to attain full employment as a country.
As a matter of fact, there is an urgent need for the Namibian government to investigate diversification of the economy into all major sectors to attain solid economic growth.
Today, agriculture has suffered from long years of neglect, mismanagement, inconsistent and poor policies, a lack of government incentives to farmers, a lack of basic infrastructure, and a lot of bureaucratic bottlenecks in executing policies and agricultural programmes among government agencies.
‘ONLY BAILOUT’
The shift of focus to the agricultural sector is the only bailout for the economy.
The demand for agricultural products out there is very high – if we produce the right quantity and quality.
It is good that the appointed people have a good understanding of their jobs.
However, appointed leaders who are responsible for agriculture must be reminded that we are in this situation in the first place, in part due to their complacency and disdain for the agricultural sector.
To meet this challenge, the agricultural sector in Namibia needs serious reforms and an increase in public investments in agriculture.
To reach these goals the development of skills and knowledge plays a key important cross-cutting and value-adding role.
Based on a review and re-evaluation of green scheme projects in the Kavango and Zambezi regions, the general situation appears to be that monitoring and evaluation have far less impact on the management process than expected or even possible.
In conclusion, green hydrogen is not the alpha and omega as a single job-creation vehicle.
Economic diversification is key to economic growth and job growth.
Therefore, the predicted 600 000 jobs by 2040 should be further refined to estimate the correct number of jobs that would be created, the type of jobs to be created, and when they would become available.
- Josef Sheehama has more than 21 years’ banking experience, serving as credit manager, branch manager, and now centralised credit head at a local commercial bank.
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