Namibia’s new president was sworn in on Friday to lead a country facing high rates of unemployment, inequality and poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And she will be dealing with it with the additional burden of being only Africa’s second-ever directly elected female president and Namibia’s first female head of state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If things go well then it will be seen as a good example,” Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told BBC’s Africa Daily podcast. “But if anything then happens, like it can happen in any administration under men, there are also those who would rather say: ‘Look at women!'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 72-year-old won November’s election with a 58% share of the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nandi-Ndaitwah has been a long-term loyalist of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) \u2013 which has been in power since the country gained independence in 1990 after a long struggle against apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She joined Swapo, then a liberation movement resisting South Africa’s white-minority rule, when she was only 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the party has made changes and improved the lives of the black majority, the legacy of apartheid can still be seen in patterns of wealth and land ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Truly, land is a serious problem in this country,” she told the BBC ahead of the inauguration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We still have some white citizens and more particularly the absent land owners who are occupying the land.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She adds that she is committed to the “willing-buyer, willing-seller” principle, which means no-one is forced to sell up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Namibia is a geographically large country with a small population of three million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Government statistics show that white farmers own about\u00a070% of the country’s farmland. A total of 53,773 Namibians\u00a0identified as white in the 2023 census, representing 1.8% of the country’s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Namibia is one of the world’s most unequal countries, with a Gini coefficient of 59.1 in 2015, according to the\u00a0World Bank, which projects poverty is expected to remain high at 17.2% in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unemployment rate rose to 36.9% in 2023 from 33.4% in 2018, according to\u00a0the country’s statistics agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nandi-Ndaitwah said the economy, which partly relies on mineral exports, should work more on adding value to what the country extracts from the ground rather than exporting raw materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also wants Namibia to focus more on creative industries and get the education sector to adjust to new economic realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nandi-Ndaitwah is only the second African woman to be directly elected as president, after Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The continent’s only other female president at the moment is Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan, who took up the role after her predecessor died in office in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nandi-Ndaitwah wants to be judged on her merits, but she said that it was a “good thing that we as countries are realising that just as men [can do], women can also hold the position of authority”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Namibia’s new president was sworn in on Friday to lead a country facing high rates of unemployment, inequality and poverty. And she will be dealing with it with the additional burden of being only Africa’s second-ever directly elected female president and Namibia’s first female head of state. “If things go well then it will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,16,15],"tags":[7,30,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-40266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"category-news","9":"category-politics","10":"tag-apie-project","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-news"},"yoast_head":"\n