Paper short abstract:

This article traces the trajectories of modernization of rural agriculture in Namibia, focusing on central-north Namibia. It analyses the experiences of the farmers, the overall reception and the interface between the rural and the urban.

Paper long abstract:

The 1960s saw the first efforts to modernize rural agriculture, at the agency of the South African colonial regime. The aim was to transform the so-called traditional socio-economic background of the indigenous people in the then South West Africa, now Namibia. To achieve this, the Commission of Inquiry into South West Africa Affairs, well known as the Odendaal Commission was undertaken in 1962. The Odendaal Commission was to provide "recommendations on a comprehensive five year plan for the accelerated development of the various non-whites groups of SWA" (Republic of South Africa 1964:3). One of the recommendations was to modernize agriculture in central-north Namibia, with a view to convert "an existing subsistence economy to an exchange economy" (South West Africa 1966:94). More than six decades later - but under a different dispensation - the independent government of the Republic of Namibia with support from international development agencies revived the efforts to modernize agriculture. The new conception is commercialization of land-based production. This article traces the trajectories of efforts to modernize agriculture in Namibia's rural areas, with a particular focus on central-north Namibia. It analyses the changes brought about by this process, the experiences of the subsistence farmers and the overall reception from socio-economic to cultural perspectives. As is, farming is a difficult business. It is heavily subsidized by incomes from elsewhere, mostly incomes from salaries earned in urban centers. Thus in discussion of modernization of rural agriculture, the interface between the rural and the urban remain detectable.