Land reform at a crossroads: Are we building farmers or simply redistributing farms?

Namibia has acquired thousands of hectares at considerable public cost. The harder question is what happens after the land changes hands.

Namibia’s land question has never been simply about hectares.

It is about history, justice, dignity, economic opportunity and the unresolved consequences of a deeply unequal system of land ownership.

It is also about something much more practical: whether Namibia can build a productive agricultural economy capable of feeding its people, creating jobs and sustaining rural communities.

That is why the questions raised in the National Assembly this week deserve considerably more attention than the parliamentary debate over the appointment of four members to the Land Reform Advisory Commission might initially suggest.

The numbers are impressive.

According to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture’s 2024/25 statistics, the government acquired 41 291.5681 hectares through 11 farms at a total cost of N$115.09 million. The acquisition exceeded the annual target of 26 387 hectares.

On paper, that looks like progress.

But land reform cannot ultimately be measured in hectares alone.

The more difficult question is what happens after the government has signed the cheque, acquired the farm and allocated the land.

Does the farm produce more food?

Does it create jobs?

Are the beneficiaries generating sustainable incomes?

Are they becoming commercially viable farmers?

Is livestock increasing?

Are crops being produced?

Is infrastructure being maintained?

Are beneficiaries able to repay loans and reinvest?

Are communities becoming economically stronger?

Or are we gradually creating a system in which the acquisition of land becomes an end in itself?

This is precisely the concern raised by Affirmative Repositioning MP Ester Sakaria-Haikola when she asked whether Namibia has a land performance system capable of tracking what happens to farms after acquisition.

It is a question that should not be dismissed as criticism of land reform.

On the contrary, it is perhaps one of the most important questions that supporters of land reform should be asking.

Because if land reform is intended to correct historical injustice while creating economic opportunity, then the ultimate measure of success must be the lives and livelihoods transformed by the programme.

The danger of counting hectares

There is an understandable political attraction to announcing how many hectares have been acquired.

Hectares are measurable.

They can be counted, placed in annual reports and compared with targets.

But hectares do not produce food by themselves.

A farm is a productive asset only when the necessary combination of land, water, capital, skills, infrastructure, markets, technology and management exists.

Namibia’s agricultural environment makes this even more important.

Much of the country is arid or semi-arid. Rainfall is unpredictable. Water is scarce. Input costs are high. Distances to markets can be considerable. Infrastructure can be expensive. Climate variability presents an additional challenge.

Simply placing someone on a farm does not automatically make that person a farmer.

This is where the country’s land reform debate needs to become considerably more sophisticated.

The question should no longer be only: Who owns the land?

It must also be: What is the land doing?

And perhaps most importantly: What is the land doing for the people who are supposed to benefit from it?

From resettlement to economic sustainability

Independent Patriots for Change member of parliament Nelson Kalangula’s intervention highlighted another important distinction.

Land acquisition is only the beginning.

A beneficiary may receive access to a farm but still lack tractors, fencing, boreholes, livestock, veterinary services, seed, finance, electricity, storage facilities, roads and access to markets.

Without these, the land may become an asset that cannot be properly utilised.

That creates a paradox.

The government can spend millions acquiring productive commercial farms, only for their productive capacity to deteriorate because the new beneficiaries cannot access the resources necessary to maintain and develop them.

This is not an argument against redistribution.

It is an argument for taking redistribution seriously enough to ensure that it succeeds.

A farmer cannot produce commercially with land alone.

If Namibia wants productive land reform, the post-settlement package may be just as important as the acquisition itself.

This is where targeted agricultural finance, extension services, infrastructure development, veterinary support, training and market access become essential.

But there is another question that must be asked.

How long should such support continue?

A land reform programme cannot sustainably create permanent dependency.

At some point, beneficiaries should be expected—and enabled—to become economically self-sufficient.

That means land reform policy needs measurable pathways from resettlement to sustainability.

What should success look like?

Sakaria-Haikola’s suggestion that land reform should measure job creation, agricultural output, household incomes, food production and commercial sustainability provides a useful starting point.

But the country could go further.

Every acquired farm should, where appropriate, have a measurable development plan.

Not every farm will have the same purpose. A livestock farm in the south cannot be measured in the same way as an irrigated crop farm in the north or a mixed agricultural enterprise elsewhere.

But each should have clearly defined objectives.

How many beneficiaries?

What production is expected?

What infrastructure exists?

What additional investment is required?

How many jobs can reasonably be created?

What are the expected outputs?

What are the environmental constraints?

What markets are available?

And after three, five or ten years, what has actually happened?

This would fundamentally change the conversation.

Instead of the government merely announcing that another 40 000 hectares have been acquired, the public could be told what those hectares are producing.

That is accountability.

The politics of land

There is also an unavoidable political dimension.

Land in Namibia carries enormous emotional and historical significance. It is therefore unsurprising that parliamentarians such as IPC MP Abednego Hishoono warned against perceptions that land allocation could become a mechanism for rewarding political loyalty or influencing the demographic composition of communities.

Such concerns require evidence rather than assumption.

But they should not be ignored.

The credibility of land reform depends heavily on public confidence that allocations are based on transparent, lawful and objective criteria.

If people begin to believe that access to land depends on political connections, the entire programme is weakened.

The same applies if communities believe that land is being acquired without a clear economic purpose or that beneficiaries are selected without transparent criteria.

Land reform requires legitimacy.

And legitimacy requires transparency.

The public should be able to understand, within reasonable privacy and legal limits, how land is acquired, how beneficiaries are selected, what obligations beneficiaries assume and how the performance of redistributed farms is monitored.

The younger generation

The concern raised by Kalangula about the age of nominee Jeaneth Kuhanga also touches on a broader question.

Who will be Namibia’s farmers in 20 or 30 years?

Land reform cannot be designed only around correcting the past.

It must also prepare Namibia for the future.

The country needs young people with agricultural skills, business knowledge, technology expertise and entrepreneurial ambition to see farming as a viable profession.

This means land reform should potentially be connected to agricultural colleges, universities, apprenticeship programmes, commercial farming partnerships, agribusiness and technology.

A young Namibian should be able to see agriculture not merely as subsistence farming, but as a sophisticated business.

Precision agriculture, water-saving technology, livestock genetics, renewable energy, agricultural processing, cold storage, logistics and digital markets can fundamentally change the economics of farming.

But none of this will happen if land reform remains primarily about physical redistribution.

Are we risking agricultural production?

This is perhaps the most uncomfortable question.

What happens if Namibia succeeds in redistributing land but fails to maintain agricultural productivity?

The consequences would extend far beyond the beneficiaries of land reform.

Namibia already imports significant quantities of food. The country therefore cannot afford a land reform model that inadvertently reduces the productive capacity of agricultural land.

That does not mean that every commercial farm acquired by government was previously perfectly productive, nor does it mean that existing commercial farming models should be preserved indefinitely.

It means that productive capacity must be protected regardless of who owns the land.

Ownership and productivity are not mutually exclusive.

Namibia can pursue greater equity in land ownership while simultaneously demanding higher agricultural productivity.

In fact, the two objectives should reinforce each other.

The question nobody should fear

The most important question emerging from this parliamentary debate is therefore not whether land reform should continue.

The question is whether Namibia is measuring the right things.

If a farm is acquired for N$10 million and five years later produces substantially less than it did before acquisition, creates fewer jobs and requires increasing government support, should that be considered a successful land reform outcome?

Conversely, if a farm is acquired and, after appropriate support, produces more food, creates jobs, develops successful farmers and contributes to the local economy, should that not become a model worth studying and replicating?

These are not ideological questions.

They are questions of public policy and public money.

The taxpayers who finance land acquisition deserve answers.

The beneficiaries who receive the land deserve support.

Commercial farmers deserve certainty about the rules governing the agricultural economy.

Young Namibians deserve opportunities to enter agriculture.

And consumers deserve an agricultural sector capable of producing more food.

A new social contract around land

Perhaps Namibia now needs a new social contract around land reform.

The government should acquire land where there is a clear public-interest case.

Beneficiaries should receive meaningful opportunities rather than merely pieces of land.

The state should provide targeted support, particularly during the establishment phase.

Beneficiaries should have clear responsibilities and measurable production objectives.

The Land Reform Advisory Commission should have the capacity and independence to provide evidence-based advice.

Parliament should scrutinise outcomes, not merely budgets and appointments.

And the public should be able to see whether land reform is delivering what it promises.

The appointment of the four LRAC nominees, Cardini Roman, Jeaneth Kuhanga, Mona-Lisa McKay and Ermelinda Tjimune, for the three-year period beginning 1 May 2026 therefore takes place against a much larger national question.

The commission’s job cannot simply be viewed through the number of files it processes or recommendations it submits.

Its broader relevance lies in helping Namibia answer one of its most consequential questions:

How do we turn land into lasting economic opportunity?

Because Namibia cannot eat hectares.

It cannot employ people with hectares.

It cannot build rural economies with hectares alone.

Land is the foundation.

But farming is an enterprise.

And the difference between the two may ultimately determine whether Namibia’s land reform becomes one of the country’s great instruments of economic transformation or whether, decades from now, we find ourselves asking why billions were spent acquiring land without adequately measuring what happened afterwards.

The country’s land question is therefore entering a new phase.

The old question was who owns the land?

The next question must be equally important:

What are we doing with it?

And perhaps the question that matters most of all:

Are we creating landowners, or building a new generation of productive, sustainable Namibian farmers?