Namibia releases first urban land statistics bulletin

Namibia's Statistics Agency on Tuesday released the country's first ever 'Namibia Preliminary Urban Land Statistics Bulletin.

Statistician General and CEO of Namibia Statistics Agency, Alex Shimuafeni indicated Namibia can broadly be divided into three land classes of state land, communal and commercial agriculture land. State land can further be subdivided into broad classes of parks, restricted areas and urban land.

"The country has experienced rapid urbanization that has exerted pressure on the availability of urban land and services. The provision of land and basic services, inadequate housing, lack of land tenure security resulting in mushrooming of informal settlements, and inadequate basic urban infrastructure capacity are some of the challenges," said Shimuafeni.

The Bulletin is divided into two parts and provides a summary of available urban zoned land in nine out of the 14 regions of the country.

The bulletin provides summaries of the number of serviced plots in all the proclaimed urban areas of the following regions: Erongo, Kunene, Omusati, Oshana, Oshikoto, Ohangwena, Kavango West, Kavango East and Zambezi.

The emphasis of the publication is mainly on residential land while also accounting for other urban land uses. The bulletin also delivers a comparison of the size of zoned urban land as a proportion to the remaining townland in each urban locality.

In 2018, it was estimated that urban land, excluding the expanded city boundary of Windhoek, accounted for about 1 percent of the total land mass or 795,244 hectares.