So Mr Schlettwein, what  do you  tell the Class of 2021?

On Monday 6^th  February 2017  some 1,000 young,bright and enthusiastic high school graduates will start studying Basic Microeconomics at the University of Namibia (UNAM) . Most don’t care much for the subject but are there because they are obliged to be as they wish to become accountants or study politics or specialize in business and management. It is vital that they understand economics and  that is why so many will be in my class. It is not for the love of knowledge, at least for most but the chasing of an increasingly illusive dream that they are in my class. It was a dream that I am sure many your and my generation believed and passed to our children and grandchildren. ‘Work hard and study, learn , get a university degree and then one day you will get a good job and  eventually have  a nice house in a leafy suburb and live happily ever after’

My dreams came true in many ways but the dreams of the children who are entering UNAM next week, I fear will not. When I left university I had nine job offers within the first week. It was not that different here in Africa in the 1970’s. The post-independence African model of development that existed at  the same time guaranteed similar outcomes. Bright young African graduates in the 1970’s and 1980’s were automatically guaranteed good government jobs based on the revenue that the government was making from mining and agriculture.

But last year Mr Schletwein, when you delivered the budget you put a freeze on hiring and many of the vacant government jobs will not be filled because of the immediate fiscal pressures. In many ways  your speech signaled the end of the post-colonial  economy in  Namibia. It was a confession that given the current development model in Namibia we have ie based on extracting economic rents from mining and  SACU  has run its course and reached its fiscal limits. This is a similar situation in many neighboring countries like Botswana where thousands of bright young people graduate from the University of Botswana  and face nothing but unemployment or low paid internships.

UNAM, like elsewhere is suffering, from the government budget cuts but these are  needed to bring the budget back into something resembling balance before the IMF does it for us with far greater ferocity and lack of care for the poor. I have no computers for my students in their E learning facility and some  staff have no offices  and that is the problem. You are right, between higher pensions for the poor and more money for universities on the other, you have made the right choice. I may be in  pain but I am with you!

The problem is not the current crisis but the dream. If the government is not going to hire the thousands of students coming out of university annually who is going to hire them? The simple fact is that the private sector is not going to hire them either because we have less and less private sector that is not directly linked to government spending. The government pays consultants to write glossy reports about beneficiation and industrialization but you and I know that almost nothing is happening and nothing will happen  until the government addresses the fundamental reasons that the private sector is not expanding in Namibia.

But Mr Schletwein this question of Namibia’s cost structure  is so politically sexless, and the answer even less sexy,  that no-one in government even wants to talk about it. But for the sake of the political stability  of the nation and the future of the kids, you and I must. The reason why no investment was occurring, even before the current crisis, is simple enough. Namibia is just too expensive to make anything that is internationally competitive and hence we are confined to the bottom end of the global value chain making holes in the ground and selling minerals so the  Chineseand Europeans can use our resources for their own development. Part of this stems from our small size but a large part is self-inflicted. We need an infrastructure policy that makes water, power and transport cheap for business. But thisis  anathema to the ideologues who think business should pay full cost for everything. But why invest in Namibia if you payfull cost recovery? 

But the biggest part of the cost of doing business, Mr Schletwein is not water or power or transport . The fundamental reason we are so internationally uncompetitive is because of the very high cost of management and professionals. Whenever this ‘post-apartheid factoid’ is publicly stated, the old white elite and those black Namibians who benefit from it and are hence  at the heart of the nation’s cost structure give a shrill response,  like one would hear from the congregation when someone begins swearing in church. The rich, do not want to hear that they are the problem and will resist any solution that may lower their standard of living. The solution is simple enough but it is  fundamentally ‘un-Trump and anti-Brexit’. Namibia needs to create unilaterally a SADC quota for several thousand African professionals coming  to Namibia and have their national qualifications recognized by automatic mutual recognition so they can work in Namibia. This will massively lower the costs of management and help transform Namibia into a far more vibrant, dynamic and competitive place. No small nation succeeds without being open to foreign talent. Just ask the Singaporeans

And so this incredibly politically sexless solution to the nation’s cost structure  is totally unpalatable to an elite that prefers to sing the AU anthem at meetings but no foreigners please. Yet this answer is not as unpalatable as what you, Mr Schletwein or your successor will have to tell the  graduates in 2021 when they graduate and come demanding jobs that do not exist. You will have to tell them to go back to the village! What a dreadful waste.

These are the views of Professor Roman Grynberg and not necessarily those of UNAM where he is employed