Talk: Political Causes and Consequences of Inequality in Namibia and the Road Ahead
Time
Wednesday, 28. September 2022
15:00 - 16:00
Location
Y 213 and on Zoom
Organizer
Speaker:
Lesley Blaauw and Anke Hoeffler
Lesley Blaauw and Anke Hoeffler: "Land Ownership and Reform in Namibia"
Prof. Lesley Blaauw, University of Namibia, is currently visiting the Cluster and working with our PI Anke Hoeffler. The purpose of the presentation is twofold. (1) Report on their ongoing research and (2) A discussion of potential extensions of the current research agenda to include Cluster members.
Abstract: Namibia’s economy and society continues to be characterized by stark structural inequalities. Although Namibia has successfully reduced poverty and is now classified as an upper middle income country, it remains one of the most unequal countries with an income Gini coefficient of almost 60. In this project we focus on the issue of land ownership and land use. Following independence from South Africa in 1990 a number of reforms addressed the issue of land ownership and use. Namibia’s agricultural sector is based on a dual agricultural system with well-developed, large-scale commercial farms on the one side, and resource-poor subsistence-oriented smallholder farmers on the other. Namibians of European descent still own 70 per cent of commercial farmland. This has implications for food security and poverty reduction, especially for the rural poor in Namibia. Going beyond the reforms in the commercial farming sector, we suggest that the rights to communally owned land has so far received too little attention and the access to urban land has been completely neglected. In addition, we flag cross-cutting issues such as gender, race and ethnicity. The analysis is based on the Cluster’s 3P-Model of Perception, Participation and Policies. The model traces how structural inequalities and unequal treatment due to group membership result in income, wealth, information and education inequalities and how feedback mechanisms through perceptions, participation and policies can change structural inequalities.
If you want to participate online and have not received a link yet, you can contact Thomas Woehler (thomas.woehler@uni-konstanz.de).