Opinions

On the 16 September 2025, prime minister Elijah Tjitunga Ngurare announced through social media that “ministry of education, innovation, youth, sports, arts and culture and the ministry of health and social services entered a memorandum of understanding with the Namibia Training Authority (NTA) to facilitate TVET trainees repairing schools, clinics, construction of sanitation facilities, classrooms, etc. Other OMAs will follow suit.”  In 2024, the Namibia National Students Organisation (Nanso) launched a programme called Fix My School, which also aimed at partnering with technical and vocational training trainees to improve the dilapidated state of schools, which is a reality they discovered…

It has been a dark and long week here in our beautiful Republic. From news of horrendous child murders in the growing battles for paternity to the ever-present gender-based violence cases, the question that has begged for response is whether it is time for Namibia to introduce mandatory paternity testing.  This has become a clarion call that is viewed as a redeeming act to prevent crimes often termed as passionate and also to safeguard men from the emotional trauma that comes with caring for children who are not theirs biologically.  In terms of benchmarking, it is important to highlight that…

Hidipo Hamata In Namibia, the right to information is guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, which ensures freedom of expression and the press. Likewise, many newspapers, including The Namibian, Namibian Sun, and Confidénte, struggle to report from rural areas due to limited resources. Covering town councils, urban crime, and government announcements is far cheaper than sending reporters hundreds of kilometres to remote communities, where roads are poor, fuel is expensive, and audiences are small. Consequently, rural issues remain underreported, investigative journalism suffers, and newsrooms increasingly rely on press statements, Facebook posts, WhatsApp messages, or court documents instead of original…

Sybille Lindner Have you ever felt your shoulders pull up when you got a fright or your belly pull tight when you thought you had forgotten something important? Have you ever felt a current of restlessness in your legs when you really wanted to do something fun, or your heart expanding with joy when you realised someone had thought of you for your birthday? These experiences are so innately part of being human that we often forget that they are part of us every day. Our feelings and emotions are not just happening in our brains – they are felt…

Monika Shafuda  Being a single mother is two-way traffic – meaning that you have to juggle household responsibilities alone, work and childcare and carry the weight of two parents at the same time. In Namibia we have brave women who endured the hardship of raising children alone, not simply because it is what they want, but because it appears to be caused by many circumstances which are sometimes uneasy to mitigate, such as untimely death, cultural norms, and laws like protection orders and divorce, just to mention a few. While the road of single motherhood is filled with love and…

Uvatera Maurihungirire Prostate cancer is the most common cancer affecting men in Namibia, with an alarmingly high rate of 63.8 cases per 100 000 men. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this number is predicted to at least triple by 2040. This means that prostate cancer has now overtaken other leading malignancies in Namibia, including breast and cervical, making it a critical public health concern that requires urgent attention. Despite this, many men are diagnosed only when the disease has advanced, which limits treatment options and reduces survival rates. Why are the numbers so high? Several factors contribute to the high prostate cancer…