Is this possible? Namibia the richest country in the world per capita, no poverty, no unemployment, everybody has clothes, everybody has food, a house, a car and a job. Is this a dream?
Not at all! With the right economic policy this is possible.
Q. Will big government create this wealth?
The answer is no. There's no example in the world of a big government that made their countries wealthy.
Q. Is big business going to make us rich?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world where big companies have made a country rich.
Q. What about the unions? Will they create wealth for us?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world of a country that's been made wealthy by unions.
Q. Will the World Bank or Bill Gates make us rich through his $60 billion welfare fund?
The answer is no. Their agenda is health. So you will end up being healthy, with no food or job or clothes. The Gates', the Buffet's, Bono etc are products of their sophisticated society. They don't have the faintest clue how to create sustainable jobs in Africa. Bono won’t last a day on a Outjo farm.
Q. Will small business and businessmen make us rich?
The answer is yes. It's a fact that 70% of a nation's wealth is being produced by small business people with 50 or less employees and maybe 80% of the employment. There are lots of examples like Switzerland, Singapore countries with no natural resources that became wealthy.
Q. We have small business people in Namibia, but why are we not rich?
The answer is: The environment for small business to flourish is not available in Africa. Small business people at the moment are like mice that scatter amongst the feet in a world inhabited by dinosaurs namely: big government, big unions and big companies.
So what has to be done to create a fertile environment for small business to flourish?
The answer is economic freedom. What is economic freedom?
Economic freedom is a small government (budget less than 20% of GNP), honest administration, low tax base, peaceful and democratic, freedom of speech, freedom from bureaucracy, helpful and understanding unions and population and government that admire respect and champion the cause of small business men. Most developing countries are not economically free. They unfortunately copied the western forms of government (a rich man's government), with all the big bureaucracy, parastatals (government enterprises), laws and regulations, high taxes, and social engineering agendas. This is like a poor man buying a Rolls Royce with all the extras while he could only afford a Toyota Corolla and in the end of the day the bank must repossess the car. I'm willing to bet anybody that if Namibia should be rated for 10 years in a row as one of the 5 freest economies in the world by the appropriate international agencies, unemployment and poverty in Namibia would be eliminated. If I am wrong I would liquidate my companies and myself and publicly give all my money to the poor and join their ranks. If anybody tells you I am wrong, let him or her spell out his or her economic solutions in terms where its success can be publicly monitored and measured like mine.Not at all! With the right economic policy this is possible.
Q. Will big government create this wealth?
The answer is no. There's no example in the world of a big government that made their countries wealthy.
Q. Is big business going to make us rich?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world where big companies have made a country rich.
Q. What about the unions? Will they create wealth for us?
The answer is no. There is no example in the world of a country that's been made wealthy by unions.
Q. Will the World Bank or Bill Gates make us rich through his $60 billion welfare fund?
The answer is no. Their agenda is health. So you will end up being healthy, with no food or job or clothes. The Gates', the Buffet's, Bono etc are products of their sophisticated society. They don't have the faintest clue how to create sustainable jobs in Africa. Bono won’t last a day on a Outjo farm.
Q. Will small business and businessmen make us rich?
The answer is yes. It's a fact that 70% of a nation's wealth is being produced by small business people with 50 or less employees and maybe 80% of the employment. There are lots of examples like Switzerland, Singapore countries with no natural resources that became wealthy.
Q. We have small business people in Namibia, but why are we not rich?
The answer is: The environment for small business to flourish is not available in Africa. Small business people at the moment are like mice that scatter amongst the feet in a world inhabited by dinosaurs namely: big government, big unions and big companies.
So what has to be done to create a fertile environment for small business to flourish?
The answer is economic freedom. What is economic freedom?
Let me present you with another helpful proposal to fast track economic growth in Namibia: "The government putts an end to value-added tax (vat), for 5 years. That would immediately put cash in the pockets of the poor. Cut government expenditure by as much as possible, this will help to curtail bureaucracy. Borrow the rest of the fiscal shortfall from the World Bank or some friendly nation like Germany at low rates. The result: you will find that the economic growth rate of Namibia will double from 4% to 8% or more and the tax base for the re-introduction of vat after 5 years would nearly have doubled supplying an income stream to the government that will comfortably pay back the intermediate loan at a lower vat rate than now."
My development plan for Namibia
It is now the third anniversary of this message as published by me in the Namibian Press at my personal expense and I will continue with it every year as long as possible until poverty and unemployment are eradicated in Namibia. My proposal is that the whole of Namibia must become a game reserve. If you ask a visitor to Namibia what impresses him the most, he will tell you it is our wide-open spaces and our game. But there are lots of wide-open spaces in other African countries too. For example the Serengeti. What do we have more than these wide-open spaces? We have a modern infrastructure and stability. We are therefore in a unique position compared to the rest of Africa. We have what economists called a competitive advantage, but we are not focusing at the moment on this competitive advantage. We do not have a national focus with a sound business model and road map to take advantage of our competitive advantage to become the richest nation, (the Switzerland of Africa) by way of example.
Let us take Spain for example. Spain was a poor European country. They had few natural assets apart from a nice coastline and nice weather. The Spanish Government, together with the private sector, opened up the Costa de Sol coastline for development and tourism and today there are hundreds of hotels and marinas. Spain every year attracts 40 million tourists and with a population of approximately 40 million, they are now a rich European country. Imagine if Namibia can attract 2 million foreign tourists instead of 200 000 at the moment. Then Namibia with its 2 million population should be theoretically as rich as Spain per capita. But what will happen if Namibia can accommodate 3 million tourists. You can imagine.
I can see in the future a Namibia with no internal fences except around the cities and villages where the game like in the Serengeti can migrate freely from the north in Etosha and Ovambo right down south to the Orange River. Millions and millions of game migrating freely over our country with the cities and villages becoming super rest camps, so to speak, exactly like the camps in the Etosha National Park just on a different scale. Five minutes out of Windhoek, it should be possible for a foreign tourist to see a lion kill, for example catching a zebra and on the big north-south highway Namibians and foreign tourists will daily experience the fantastic African wild life opera or play of nature taking its course and living its life.
Please bear in mind that nobody will be forced to participate in this nation wide game reserve. Of course there will be pockets of agricultural, industrial, mines as well as communal areas. The idea is for the maximum amount of land (for example 80%), to be incorporated on a willing basis spurred on by the success, wealth and job creation of the participants in this national Game Reserve.
This Namibian game reserve (the whole country) in its totality is the only workable sustainable model for Namibia that makes sense. There is no other way at this stage in time. Bill Gates is not going to come to Windhoek and build a computer factory. General Motors is not going to build an assembly line in Namibia. Boeing is not going to start building airplanes here. We must realize our shortcomings and our constraints. Only then will everybody realize that the best that we have to offer to the rest of the world is our tourism potential and here we do have a competitive advantage.
Every citizen, every business, every official in the Government should work to achieve this goal. This road map for Namibia should have priority above all other matters for the nation. Students at school and University should have tourism and nature conservation as a mandatory subject. All decisions that are taken in the business and public sector should be weighed against only one question. Is this going to contribute to the Namibian game reserve and foreign tourism or is it going to be to its
detriment? So where does Erindi and I come into the picture? We on Erindi would like to set the example for the rest of the country to follow. The seedbed, the womb where this future Namibian model can be tried and tested and the practical intellectual capital be accumulated. What happens on Erindi can branch out or seed the rest of the country. The practical experience gained in Erindi of how to accommodate large numbers of tourists and create large numbers of employment will be passed on to the rest of the country.
It is imperative that we should learn how to live with nature in harmony and also take from nature on a sustainable basis. This is the future of our planet. God gave us this large inheritance in Africa and if we do not learn these skills, we will lose everything. What the colonial Governments did by moth balling huge tracks of land in Africa was maybe the right way 80 years ago, but the intellectual perspective of those decisions is not going to stand the test of time. Population pressure is going to force us to develop new business plans. Please remember most national game reserves in the world are a financial liability to the Government and if we cannot find a way to conserve and utilize a win-win situation we are doomed. The national parks of the past were good for it's time but its shelf life has now expired.
I am just a man that will feel very proud if I can say: "I have played a little role in this African success story". Namibia is now the number one tourist destination in Africa, and the richest, where poverty and unemployment is something of the past.
Thank you for your time
Gert Joubert
Please bear in mind that nobody will be forced to participate in this nation wide game reserve. Of course there will be pockets of agricultural, industrial, mines as well as communal areas. The idea is for the maximum amount of land (for example 80%), to be incorporated on a willing basis spurred on by the success, wealth and job creation of the participants in this national Game Reserve.
This Namibian game reserve (the whole country) in its totality is the only workable sustainable model for Namibia that makes sense. There is no other way at this stage in time. Bill Gates is not going to come to Windhoek and build a computer factory. General Motors is not going to build an assembly line in Namibia. Boeing is not going to start building airplanes here. We must realize our shortcomings and our constraints. Only then will everybody realize that the best that we have to offer to the rest of the world is our tourism potential and here we do have a competitive advantage.
Every citizen, every business, every official in the Government should work to achieve this goal. This road map for Namibia should have priority above all other matters for the nation. Students at school and University should have tourism and nature conservation as a mandatory subject. All decisions that are taken in the business and public sector should be weighed against only one question. Is this going to contribute to the Namibian game reserve and foreign tourism or is it going to be to its
detriment? So where does Erindi and I come into the picture? We on Erindi would like to set the example for the rest of the country to follow. The seedbed, the womb where this future Namibian model can be tried and tested and the practical intellectual capital be accumulated. What happens on Erindi can branch out or seed the rest of the country. The practical experience gained in Erindi of how to accommodate large numbers of tourists and create large numbers of employment will be passed on to the rest of the country.
It is imperative that we should learn how to live with nature in harmony and also take from nature on a sustainable basis. This is the future of our planet. God gave us this large inheritance in Africa and if we do not learn these skills, we will lose everything. What the colonial Governments did by moth balling huge tracks of land in Africa was maybe the right way 80 years ago, but the intellectual perspective of those decisions is not going to stand the test of time. Population pressure is going to force us to develop new business plans. Please remember most national game reserves in the world are a financial liability to the Government and if we cannot find a way to conserve and utilize a win-win situation we are doomed. The national parks of the past were good for it's time but its shelf life has now expired.
I am just a man that will feel very proud if I can say: "I have played a little role in this African success story". Namibia is now the number one tourist destination in Africa, and the richest, where poverty and unemployment is something of the past.
Thank you for your time
Gert Joubert
