The communal land reality cannot be wished away

President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s call for traditional authorities to make communal land available for agriculture and ecotourism as part of the implementation of NDP6 sounds attractive on paper. It is the kind of statement that fits comfortably into a national development speech: traditional leaders provide land, entrepreneurs provide investment, government provides support, and rural communities prosper.

But Namibia’s development challenges are rarely that simple.

The uncomfortable question is whether we are asking traditional authorities to deliver something they have not been equipped and, in many instances, have not demonstrated the capacity to deliver.

There is something profoundly unrealistic about imagining that simply making communal land available will unlock agricultural production, create enterprises and transform rural economies. Land is necessary. It is not sufficient.

Consider the Zambezi itself. It is one of Namibia’s most water-rich regions, with communities living in close proximity to major rivers and fertile floodplains. Yet proximity to water has not automatically translated into food security, commercial agriculture or economic prosperity. Some communities living virtually next door to abundant water sources still require drought relief and food assistance.

That should force us to pause.

If communities living beside some of the country’s most significant water resources can remain vulnerable to food insecurity, then the problem cannot simply be that traditional authorities have not made enough land available.

The real question is what happens after the land is made available.

Who finances the irrigation systems? Who builds roads? Who provides electricity? Who supplies agricultural equipment? Who provides extension services, veterinary support, storage facilities, processing plants and market access? Who carries the risk when crops fail? Who ensures that rural entrepreneurs can access affordable capital?

And perhaps most importantly: who takes responsibility when a well-intentioned agricultural project becomes another abandoned government initiative?

Namibia has no shortage of land. What we have is a shortage of productive utilisation of much of the land available to us.

Traditional authorities control vast tracts of communal land, much of which remains uncultivated. This is not necessarily because traditional leaders are deliberately withholding land from development. The reasons are more complicated. Communal land tenure, environmental conditions, limited infrastructure, financing constraints, fragmented markets, livestock practices and inadequate agricultural support all contribute to the problem.

We therefore need to be careful about presenting traditional authorities as the missing link in Namibia’s agricultural transformation.

They cannot be expected to become development agencies overnight.

Traditional authorities have an important role in community governance, cultural preservation, dispute resolution and social cohesion. But asking them to become major economic-development institutions without fundamentally addressing the structural constraints facing communal areas risks creating another layer of responsibility without the resources to fulfil it.

The President is right about one thing: traditional institutions cannot remain disconnected from contemporary economic realities. But adaptation must go both ways. Government must also adapt its expectations to the realities confronting traditional authorities and the communities they represent.

The NDP6 ambition of developing human capital, expanding economic activity and creating opportunities for young Namibians is commendable. But young people cannot eat development plans. They need productive enterprises.

A young person in the Zambezi does not necessarily need another speech about agriculture. They need access to land that can actually be developed, water that can reliably reach their fields, electricity, finance, technology, skills, roads and a market willing to buy what they produce.

The same applies to ecotourism.

Namibia has enormous tourism potential, including in communal areas. But putting communal land at the disposal of tourism investors does not automatically create successful tourism enterprises. Investors require clarity over tenure, infrastructure, security, connectivity, viable tourism products and predictable regulatory arrangements.

There is also a danger in romanticising communal land as an economic resource waiting to be unlocked. For many communities, that land is not an unused economic asset. It is home, grazing territory, cultural space and the foundation of livelihoods.

Development must therefore not become another euphemism for taking decisions about rural land without sufficiently involving the people who depend upon it.

The President’s call should instead become the beginning of a much more difficult national conversation.

If traditional authorities are expected to release land for agriculture and ecotourism, government should tell the nation precisely what it intends to put behind that land.

How much irrigation infrastructure will be constructed? How many kilometres of rural roads will be upgraded? What financing mechanisms will be created for communal farmers? What incentives will attract private investment? How will agricultural produce reach markets? What happens when drought strikes? And how will communities benefit from commercial ventures established on their land?

These are the questions that determine whether NDP6 becomes development or merely another collection of ambitious targets.

Namibia has spent decades discussing the potential of communal areas. Perhaps it is time we stopped treating land availability as the principal obstacle.

The uncomfortable truth is that Namibia does not have a land shortage alone. We have an implementation shortage.

We have land. We have people. We have entrepreneurs. We have universities and technical institutions. We have natural resources. We have markets. What remains painfully inadequate is the infrastructure, financing, coordination and institutional capacity required to convert these assets into sustained economic production.

Traditional authorities can be part of that solution.

But they cannot be expected to carry it.

If we genuinely want communal land to drive NDP6, government must move beyond exhortation and provide a credible economic architecture around it.

Otherwise, we will continue doing what Namibia has perfected for decades: announcing that vast resources are available, celebrating their potential, and then wondering why ordinary Namibians remain poor.

Land alone does not produce development.

Productive land, water, capital, infrastructure, skills, markets and accountable institutions do.

That is the conversation NDP6 should be having.