Population growth is a curse for Namibia

Population growth is a curse for Namibia

By Victor Angula |

It was reported in the local news late last week that Ms Fransina Ndateelela Kahungu has expressed a desire that Namibians give birth to more kids in order to improve the country’s population growth.

Kahungu, who in the past served as a mayor for Windhoek City, said that a growing population is good for economic growth, saying that an economy grows when there are more consumers.

Ms Kahungu’s is right. And she is also wrong.

She is right if she is calling on Namibians who are better off economically to give birth more and more.

In fact, yes, her children must give birth to more children, because her grandchildren are sorted. They will grow up to go to the best private schools locally and abroad, and they will never worry about what to eat. They will never be jobless, and therefore they will be the consumers who will grow the economy.

But she is wrong if she calls on the poor Namibians, the people who live in shacks, to give birth to more children.

A poor woman living in a shack is already struggling to feed the one or two children she has. And the children will go to state schools, where they will most likely fail, and end up on the street and be unemployed for most of their lives. They will never be consumers who can grow the economy.

The context must be clear that population growth is a good thing for a country if the majority of the population are well-off. But population growth is a curse for a country if the majority of the population are poor and struggling to make a living.

As for Namibia, we don’t need a population growth. Giving birth to more children will not be a blessing to someone or to the economy but a curse since a lot of the children are most certainly going to end up being unemployed and useless to the economy.

*– Victor Angula is the editor of Omutumwa News Online. He can be reached at *victorangula@yahoo.com