Lazarus Kwedhi
On 31 March 2026, the Presidential Task Force on Land, Housing and Sanitation submitted its report to President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
After months of consultations and the commitment of state resources, its housing recommendations sound familiar: establish a Mortgage Bank, support National Housing Enterprise (NHE), strengthen Build Together, promote Alternative Building Technologies, and scale up PPPs and employer housing schemes.
The recommendations are disappointing. Instead of providing alternative solutions, they reproduce the current housing crisis in a different shape, but with the same taste. On paper, it looks like action.
On the ground, it feels like “new packaging, same players.” The task force fails to grasp the true intention of our current housing legal frameworks and the primary mandate of the institutions responsible for financing urban serviced land.
As a result, it fails to harmonise the relationship between all key stakeholders to address the housing needs of employees, employers, and the general public – specifically: accessibility and affordability to serviced land ownership and the right to build houses of their choice.
Namibia’s housing crisis is not a mystery. It is a crisis of serviced land and finance. It is also a myth peddled by politicians into the public mind: that we must believe and place faith in the government to build houses for us.
The ideal is simple. Allocate serviced land to municipal residents for residential purposes, and thereafter let them build their own houses.
That is why people in rural villages do not complain about lack of housing or land from the Omukwaniilwa and chiefs. Until we address who currently controls land and who pays for it – against who is supposed to control and finance urban serviced land – we will keep recycling the same failed model and call it task force recommendations presented in different grammar.
The core problem: Serviced land, not bricks
The mandate to provide serviced land lies with government and local authorities under the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development.
That is the law. But in practice, local authorities and NHE have deserted and outsourced this core mandate. They have failed to build the required human capital capacity and to make the financial commitment.
Then they pretend to lack capital and capacity to service land, intentionally, to pave the way for PPPs, property developers, and commercial banks.
The developer adds profit. The bank adds interest and risk. A plot that costs N180,000 before a single brick is laid.
This is why houses are unaffordable. The problem is not construction, nor a lack of legal frameworks, institutions, town planners, engineers, and surveyors in the market, or lack of employer housing subsidy/allowance.
The fundamental problem is that we have allowed profit to be inserted into the servicing of land – a core public function. The government has run away from its primary responsibility to ensure every Namibian family has decent shelter.
Simply because public servants and office bearers have chosen to commercialise and commodify housing as a basic need, and opted to do private business using entrusted public power and office.
PPP: A political vehicle, not a solution
The task force places heavy emphasis on PPPs. In Namibia, PPPs have become a vehicle for dishing out urban land and construction tenders to politically connected developers and tenderpreneurs.
They buy urban land below market value, get tenders to service land or construct houses at inflated prices, and often deliver sub-standard work.
It keeps debt off government books, but pushes the risk and cost onto the homeowner. The citizen ends up paying for the land, the developer’s margin, the bank’s interest, and municipal services – all from a salary that barely covers groceries.
To say “the government has no money” is a fallacy. If the private sector has capital and capacity to service urban land and construct houses that the government does not have, then it is an insult to the sovereign state.
It is an indication of serious problems in financial management, investment priorities, and organisational development of state governance. Servicing land is not consumption. It is infrastructure that creates ratepayers and grows the economy.
Two gaps the task force ignored
First: ABTs without finance. The report promotes Alternative Building Technologies without asking two basic questions: what is wrong with the current building code, and will commercial banks actually finance ABTs?
Today, banks still reject non-brick houses or demand 40% deposits. A standard without bank accreditation is meaningless. This model is not different from communal land occupation, where one cannot secure a loan from a commercial bank.
Second: Designs that ignore culture. The standard 1 or 2-bedroom house on a 300sqm erf promoted by NHE, Build Together, or Shack Dwellers Federation does not fit how Namibians live.
Our extended family structure requires at minimum: parents’ room, boys’ room, girls’ room, and a guest room or Ondjugo. That is about dignity, privacy, and hospitality. With current designs, we are not promoting our constitutional values. We are eroding them.
An alternative: Return housing to the public
We need a different model. One that returns housing to its constitutional purpose: a government responsibility to deliver serviced urban land through local authorities, whereby:
1. The government directly funds land servicing at local authority level, through the local authorities themselves or NHE. No middleman in urban land servicing.
2. Allocate land at cost-recovery. Local authorities should sell serviced plots at service cost plus a small admin fee, not at market price, to employees, employers, and the general public for residential purposes.
3. Give citizens choice. Once a person has title, let them choose any bank, NHE, Build Together, or self-funding to build their preferred house in line with municipal building standards and considering the rights of extended families. The rationale is to break the current monopoly in the housing market held by banks, property developers, and PPPs promoted by politicians who are seeking finance for political campaigns and re-election.
4. Design for our culture. Adopt a 4 to 5-bedroom typology on 600-700sqm erven to accommodate extended families’ rights to culture, privacy, and dignity.
5. Accredit ABTs for finance. The government, banks, and NCR must approve ABT systems before rollout so people can actually get bonds.
6. Make it affordable to keep. Introduce rebates on rates and basic services for pensioners, the unemployed, and low-income households. Stop auctioning homes for municipal debt.
Why a house feels like a trap
Right now, owning a house in Namibia has no real commercial value for the homeowner. It is an exploitation trap for those who own, and a prevention trap for those seeking land and housing ownership.
You struggle to get a bond. You then spend 30 years repaying it from a “slavery salary.” On top of that, you pay municipal rates, water, and electricity. For pensioners, the house becomes a liability and a risk of being auctioned due to municipal debt.
For the unemployed, the only option is to stay in a shack in an informal settlement. We are not building assets. We are building debt traps.
Fewer tenders, more titles
The task force wants to de-risk housing for private capital. We need to de-commodify serviced land for the public good.
Namibia does not need another housing programme that depends on developers and banks. We need serviced plots, secure titles, and the freedom for people to build homes that fit their culture and income.
The central government must give local authorities the money and ensure they have the human capital to successfully deliver their mandate to service land. Give citizens the land at cost. Let them build with the lender of their choice.
That is the ideal model to truly accelerate delivery, protect public value, and make housing affordable, accessible, and sustainable.
