This review is the first comprehensive assessment of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) portfolio in Namibia conducted by the FAO Office of Evaluation.

It covers FAO’s engagement from 2019 to 2024 and focuses on selected thematic areas, jointly identified with FAO Namibia to address priority learning needs and inform the next Country Programming Framework (CPF).

The review was guided by four questions: 

What is FAO’s approach in Namibia to serve its unique needs as an upper-middle income country?

To what extent does FAO leverage its technical expertise to remain relevant compared to other development partners working in Namibia?

How is FAO supporting Namibia in strengthening its policy, legal, strategic and institutional frameworks, and what tangible changes have been made towards achieving national and international commitments?

To what extent did FAO’s support contribute to building resilience to recurrent drought and transboundary plant and animal pests and diseases outbreaks and to strengthening capacities for disaster risk reduction and natural resources management?

What did the review find?

The review found FAO’s programming broadly coherent with Namibia’s dual reality as an upper middle income country with extreme inequality. FAO is widely recognized for managing agricultural shocks, with its comparative advantage most evident in the locust response, and its policy support. However, key areas of agrifood systems transformation, including value chain development, nutrition and agricultural water management, received limited attention and were repeatedly flagged by stakeholders as priorities requiring greater focus. FAO’s operational footprint is spread too thinly across all regions and does not reflect clear prioritization; limited resources, weak field presence and limited documentation of targeting decisions make it difficult to determine whether support reaches the most vulnerable or to monitor progress and challenges. FAO’s emergency, resilience and NRM work showed strong potential but uneven results: excelled in managing transboundary pests and diseases, while its approach to slow-onset disasters (drought) remained piecemeal. Emerging NRM work signals a shift toward integrated programming linking conservation, agriculture, food security and livelihoods.

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