The Namibian government announced, via its president Hage Geingob (photo), its plan to organize a conference to discuss the white farmers’ land expropriation reform actually being reviewed in the country.

According to the president’s statements reported by Reuters, this conference planned for October would be an opportunity to discuss many points of the land reform dividing the country’s public opinion. Indeed, according to this reform, by 2020, 43% of Namibia’s arable lands should be transferred to black people, predominant but largely underprivileged.

The debates should therefore mainly revolve around sellers and buyers’ consent, ancestral ownership claims, expropriation for the public interest with a fair compensation, the urban land reform, and resettlement criteria.  

These debates will help defuse the political and ethnic tensions created by this sensitive issue that land reform is while South Africa, its large neighbor is at the heart of a major controversy as far as its land reform is concerned.

Let’s remind that in April 2018, Namibia foregone a law aimed at fighting economic inequalities in a country where the white minority (6%) own the riches. This law was obliging Namibian companies to sell 25% of their shares to residents.

Moutiou Adjibi Nourou