As the most arid country in Sub-Saharan Africa, both agricultural and livestock production in Namibia are severely limited by the scarcity of water resources, erratic rainfall regimes and fragile ecological systems. In the western border of the country lies the Namib desert, to the south the Kalahari. The central interior of the country is either arid or semi-arid grass or scrub savanna. Only to the north, towards the Angolan border, does mean annual rainfall increase and the land supports a semi-humid and sub-tropical climate.
Although Namibia's total population is only 1.4 million inhabitants1 (population density is 1.7 per square kilometre), there is immense regional variation in population density. Water availability is the major determinant of settlement patterns. The bulk of the black rural population reside in the north along the perennial rivers which form the country's Northern border. Elsewhere in the country, rural inhabitants are concentrated around seasonal rivers and flood plains, and along human-made pipelines and water systems.
At the beginning of the century, the Germans colonised the country setting up a basic infrastructure to access newly discovered diamond and mineral mines. After the first World War, South Africa was given the "guardianship" of South West Africa, as Namibia was called, and encouraged white settlement by giving title to land for commercial farming. Both the German and South African colonisers created ethnically-based reserves and restricted movement into the settler zone in order to limit productivity of the African farmers and to force rural men to provide cheap labour for mines, commercial farmers, fishing enterprises and urban businesses. Racially based land policies ensured that settlers owned superior grazing land in the central areas. The subsequent shortage of land and labour created a dualistic agricultural system: black subsistence farming in the communal areas, in which women constitute the majority of producers, and white commercial farming, in the central and southern areas in which black farm workers provide the bulk of labour2.
The communal areas directly support 95 percent of the nation's farming population, but occupy only 48 percent (33.5 million hectares) of the total agricultural land. Farmers in the communal areas are mainly engaged in subsistence rain fed cropping and extensive livestock production, characterised by extremely low levels of productivity, high variability of output from one year to the next and a high degree of poverty, household food insecurity and malnutrition. The commercial farming sector occupies about 36.2 million hectares which are mainly used for extensive ranching. The sub-sector is made up of 6,337 freehold title deed farms belonging to about 4,200 large scale farmers, each having an average land holding of approximately 8,620 hectares3.
Namibia has a high incidence of extreme poverty and highly inequitable income distribution. The richest 5 percent of the population control 71 percent of GDP, with an average per capita income of US$14,000 per year, which is comparable with the middle stratum of developed countries in Europe. The poorest 55 percent account for merely 3 percent of GDP, with a per capita income of less than US$100 per year. Approximately 47 percent of the population are living in poverty, defined as households where more than 60 percent of income is spent on food. Of these, 13 percent are living in severe poverty (spending more that 80 percent of their income on food) and suffering from varying degrees of malnutrition4.
In some regions, the prevalence of outward migration has resulted in rural households consisting mainly of the elderly, women and children. According to the 1991 census, female headed households in rural areas numbered 42.9 percent5. Although many rural households rely heavily on remittances or wages of family members employed in urban areas or on commercial farms, the responsibility for food production and preparation and the overall well-being of the household continues to fall on women. Gender analysis of the situation of the rural poor reveals that women especially are severely constrained by their heavy workloads, and by unequal access to land, labour, agricultural services and assets, natural resources and employment opportunities. Female headed households face the additional constraint of seasonal labour shortages (due to male migration) and are generally among the poorest of rural households6.
A map of the country and a table of basic facts about agriculture in Namibia are found in Annexes 1 and 2. Tables of key gender disaggregated information are found in Annex 4.
Given that the majority of Namibians live in rural areas (over 72 percent in 1991) and agriculture by far provides the most important source of employment, supporting directly or indirectly some 70 percent of the country's population, agriculture has been selected as one of the four priority sectors by the new Government. Avoiding hasty policy initiatives just after independence, the Government supported a broad-based, countrywide consultative process during 1994 and 1995 to seek the views of the people for the formulation of policy for the agricultural sector7. The National Agricultural Policy (NAP) was finalised and approved by cabinet in October of 1995.
The overall goal of National Agricultural Policy is to increase and sustain levels of agricultural productivity, real farm incomes and national and household food security, within the context of Namibia's fragile ecosystem. A major thrust of the policy is to specifically target support to the much neglected communal farming sector which is considered to offer the greatest potential for growth and diversification (and is the area of greatest need). This will be accomplished through a major change in the role of extension services which will be divested of direct responsibility for providing farmer support services such as drought relief and ploughing services (which mainly benefited large-scale farmers). Instead, extension will provide services in the form of advisory, information communications, and training aimed at empowering farmers, and at encouraging the adoption of improved agricultural and related income generating technologies and practices. The extension service will promote participatory farming systems research with a focus on developing sustainable farming practices and improved productivity and diversity of production. The extension services will target small and medium-scale farmers in the communal areas, especially female headed households, youth and retrenched farm labourers.
A unique aspect of Namibia's agricultural policy is the recognition it makes of the important role women play in agricultural production. The implication to be drawn from the many references made throughout the document to gender issues is that the Government and other actors in the sector must adopt a more gender-responsive approach to working with communal farmers. These references include the following:
· To ensure that its activities are both cost-effective and relevant to the needs of all of the farming community, the Government's agricultural research, extension, and training services will . . . . take gender issues fully into account (paragraph v. of the executive summary).
· Women need to be recognised as farmers in their own right (paragraph 46).
· The Government acknowledges the constraints and discriminatory practices facing many female-headed households and youth in rural areas throughout Namibia. The crucial role of women and the youth in agricultural development needs to be re-emphasised, and their participation in agricultural organisations and related institutions ensured. Existing social norms and values relating to women and gender discrimination must be changed. Women will be assisted in overcoming constraints to their participation in development efforts related to their lack of knowledge, limited access to land, lack of security of tenure, discriminatory laws, shortages of labour and poor access to services and finance (paragraph 47).
· Recognising the importance of women in agricultural production, detailed gender analysis of farming systems will be undertaken to facilitate the development of gender specific strategies for increased household food security ( paragraph 50).
· Extension and advisory services will be well directed to address female-headed households, retrenched farm labourers, and youths engaged in agriculture as a means of livelihood and gainful employment (paragraph 65).
· The number of female extension workers will be increased through the provision of scholarships and recruitment programmes (paragraph 67).
· To understand and address the particular needs of women farmers, gender-sensitive research is of utmost priority (paragraph 70).
· The Government supports the provision of credit to all farmers, regardless of gender, and to unemployed youth throughout the country. The Government will change the marriage legislation to enable married women to have access to credit in their own right (paragraph 101).
· As most communal farmers are women, the specific issue of access of rural women to land will be given priority consideration. Recognising the variable systems of inheritance practised in Namibia, the Government will review and amend inheritance systems which currently discriminate against women. The aim will be to increase women's tenurial security in their own right and to enable them to have control over land and other resources (paragraph 159).
