The Erongo Region has more land allocated for residential plots compared to other eight regions surveyed, Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) said on Tuesday in its Namibia preliminary urban land statistics report.
The survey revealed that Erongo has 42 758 plots, followed by Oshana at 38 843, Kavango East at 23 052 and Omusati at 13 781 residential plots, among the top four regions.
“Looking at residential plots to total plots by region, Kunene Region has classified more residential plots to total plots within the region at 91.5% followed by Zambezi Region at 91.4%. What this means is that there are more plots classified as residential compared to other land uses such as business, institutional use or open spaces,” NSA CEO and Statistician General, Alex Shimuafeni said.
In terms of the number of residential plots by urban locality, Rundu in Kavango East Region was found to have the highest number at 22 293 residential plots followed by Oshakati at 16 486 plots.
Helao Nafidi Town Council has the smallest number of residential plots at 209 plots followed by Bukalo Village Council.
“NSA further exploded the regions to look at land use classifications within the urban localities. The number of zoned plots by urban locality is an indirect indication of the level of development of the local authorities. It was found that Rundu in Kavango East Region has more urban plots among the 9 regions at 25,157 followed by Oshakati at 18,126 while Bukalo has the lowest number of plots at 490 only. Okongo has more urban plots among village councils at 1,570,” he said.
In terms of zoning schemes, Omaruru, Divundu and Ondangwa are the top three most zoned urban localities, having more than three quarters of their land already zoned.
“Tsumeb and Khorixas are the least planned or zoned urban localities having less than 1.5% of their townlands zoned. They are followed by Kamanjab at 1.7%, Outjo at 2.6% and Omuthiya at 4.6% respectively,” Shimuafeni said.
The NSA survey found that in the country’s nine regions, there are only a total of 192 261 plots covering a land size of 71 686.8 hectares of zoned urban land out of the 370 452.9 hectares, representing only 19.4% of the total urban land.
The new survey 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, with an emphasis on residential land while also accounting for other urban land uses.
According to the NSA, in terms of town planning cadastral data, it could only manage to acquire data from the 9 regions between November 2020 and February 2021, with the remaining 5 regions of Hardap, !Karas, Khomas, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa expected to be covered during the window of November 2021 to February 2022.
