"They have no voice, no jobs; poverty is excruciating, slavery is there -- because they work for others for nothing, like in only getting a plate of food or tombo (traditional beer). They are just suffering." This was the sobering assessment of Namibia's indigenous San community, delivered by Deputy Prime Minister Libertina Amathila last September after a visit to the north-eastern Otjozondjupa region where the majority of San live.

This study investigates the effect of education quality on rates of return to education in Namibia. In particular, the question raised in this study is whether the quality of schooling as proxied by better school resources matters much in determining future earnings of people. The study finds that school resources as measured by pupil-teacher ratio and teacher qualification had very little impact on rate of returns to education. This implies that school resources are an inadequate measure of quality of education received by an individual.

The Namibian government has secured US $12 million in donor support for conservation efforts in four national parks over the next decade, which will have an impact on rural poverty. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) provided US $8.5 million and Germany's development agency, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, $3.5 million, with the Namibian government adding $27.4 million in cash and kind. The GEF, established in 1991, helps developing countries fund environmental projects and programmes.

"Everything revolves around money and without work there is no money," says 33-year-old Maria Xoagub*, a mother of three who earns her living as a prostitute. "Sometimes we try stopping going to sell our bodies in the streets, but when poverty takes over we are back there." Xoagub’s story is one heard frequently from Namibia’s sex workers. In a country where the unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent, prospects of getting a job outside prostitution are slim for sex workers, many of whom are illiterate.

A Namibian rights NGO has slammed a local government scheme to provide prepaid water, saying it is making the basic commodity "unaffordable for the poor". Helena Negumbo is among several thousand informal dwellers who have to buy water, when they can afford it, from a municipal tap. "I must first buy a card and put it into [a meter-box near] the tap. When the [money on the] card is finished, the water stops running, but I don't always have money for [more water]," she told IRIN.

When former Namibian health minister Libertina Amathila made an emotional plea five years ago for prostitution to be legalised, her cabinet colleagues, parliament and the churches shot her views down, saying they were unacceptable. Richard Kamwi, Amathila's successor, said the government would not revisit the matter, but the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC) has insisted a rethink is necessary in a country with an adult HIV prevalence rate of over 21 percent.

At least 269 asylum seekers currently residing at Osire Camp have been denied refugee status by the Namibian government. The majority are from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia and Uganda. According to the Chairman of the Association for the Defence of Refugee Rights (ADR) at Osire MacGoddins Lushimba, refugees received responses from the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration indicating that their requests for refugee status had been rejected.

The Namibian Broadcasting Corporation granted its former Director General, Gerry Munyama, an interest-free loan of N$100 000 during his employment there, it has emerged, writes Lindsay Dentlinger in The Namibian. This is one of a number of revelations on the inner workings of the NBC - detailed in the Auditor General's report for the 2003-04 financial year and tabled in the National Assembly last week. The report highlights the NBC's precarious financial position and questions whether the broadcaster can be deemed operational.

Kaitira Kandjii, 43, has been appointed the new Regional Director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) as from 1 April 2006, according to a report in the Namibia Economist. Kandjii takes over from Luckson Chipare, a Zimbabwean, who has worked for MISA for the last 10 years, five of the last ones as Regional Director. Before his appointment, Kandjii, the first Namibian to hold the senior post, was the head of Freedom of Expression at the MISA Regional Secretariat in Windhoek.

The successful applicant will serve the Alliance in the next steps of its development in order to promote decentralised cooperation and good local governance to accelerate and expand responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, based on values of equity and partnership across sectors and targeting those most in need. Fluency in English and French is essential.

Amid a looming energy crunch in Southern Africa, the Namibian government is pulling out all the stops to promote the use of renewable energies like wind and solar power. Namibia is dependant on South Africa for about half of its average daily power consumption of 200 megawatts (MW). South Africa's power utility Eskom announced in 2004 that it would be unable to provide Namibia with a steady supply of electricity in the near future. Eskom's surplus electricity supply capacity is expected to run out by 2007, as power demands in South Africa were expected to increase by 1,200 MW per annum.

Government ruffled some feathers among renewable-energy advocates yesterday (January 30) when it said it had been toying with the idea of nuclear power as a potential energy source for Namibia. But Mines and Energy Permanent Secretary Joseph Iita was quick to add that to date the subject had enjoyed only minimal attention and that at present Government was only informing itself about such an option. It has, however, informed Namibia's biggest uranium mine, Roessing, that a small nuclear power plant was up for discussion.

Without government support, a proposal to provide electricity to the informal settlements that ring the Namibian capital, Windhoek, is likely to be shelved because residents cannot afford the connection costs. A feasibility study commissioned by the Windhoek municipality found that income levels among the 14,000 people living in the townships were barely sustaining their most basic needs, leaving no surplus to pay for municipal services. The communities have complained about the lack of electricity, and street lighting in particular, because "dark neighbourhoods promote crime such as rape, murder and theft", a statement by the Windhoek Municipality noted.

The Chairperson of the NamPower Board of Directors, Andries Hungamo, says the power utility will spend N$1,5 billion to develop a 200 to 400 MW transmission interconnection between Zambia and Namibia, particularly in the Caprivi Region. The link is believed to will hold various strategic supply and commercial benefits for NamPower and is likely to decrease the country's dependency on South Africa for electricity. Hungamo said the project has been made possible by Zambia's recent construction of a 220 Kilovolt line from the Zambian substation at Livingstone to the Zambezi substation at Katima Mulilo.

A 30-year-old law in Namibia banning male-to-male sex is preventing condom distribution in the country's prisons and hindering HIV prevention efforts, according to HIV/AIDS advocates, South Africa's Mail & Guardian reports. According to government officials, condom distribution would promote sex between men, which is outlawed under the 1977 Criminal Procedures Act.

Namibia has asked South Africa to send forensic experts to help investigate at least five mass graves discovered in the north of the country. The graves, near a South African army base, are thought to date from South African occupation of Namibia. Before independence in 1990 South African was engaged in conflict with Namibian Swapo liberation fighters in northern Namibia and in Angola. Police say clothes found at the site resemble those worn by Swapo fighters.

Young people who drop out of the formal school system would no longer struggle to grasp concepts at vocational training institutions following the Namibia Training Authority (NTA)’s initiative to simplify the curriculum. This week, NTA handed over a unit of standards, curricula and training manuals for the bricklaying and plastering occupation and the hospitality industry.

SAfAIDS offers a short-term consultancy in two Southern African Countries - Namibia and Mozambique. SAfAIDS has become increasingly convinced of the critical role of culture in influencing the direction and rate at which social change around gender equality and HIV/AIDS prevention and impact mitigation occurs in communities.

Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba's anti-corruption campaign scored a significant victory this week with the resignation from parliament of a scandal-tainted former minister, analysts said. Paulus Kapia was forced to resign from his position as deputy minister of works, transport and communication in late August, after a high court liquidation inquiry into a US $5.7 million investment in his company, Avid Investment Corporation, went missing.

Ndjianje Tjiraure, 16, always excelled as a student at Ashipena High School in Katutura, Namibia's oldest black suburb. But her hopes of becoming an engineer were dashed when she fell pregnant and gave birth to a boy last November, thanks to an education policy that requires teenage mothers to take at least a year off school to care for their babies. "The authorities learnt of my pregnancy in the third month and expelled me," Tjiraure, who was in Grade 9 at the time of her pregnancy, told IRIN. "I have been told that I can only be admitted in school next year." Statistics on young mothers like Tjiraure are not available, but she is not the only casualty of the policy Namibia adopted in October 1999.