By Alina Amwaama
Nearly a month after Finance Minister Ericah Shafudah presented Namibia’s 2025/26 national budget on 27 March 2025, communities across the country are still waiting to see whether the N$106.3 billion plan will translate into the schools, clinics, roads, and water systems they desperately need.
While development spending was increased by 22.6 percent to N$12.8 billion, igniting hopes that capital projects will accelerate, many “institutional erven” (plots reserved for public facilities) remain undeveloped, revealing a persistent misalignment between spatial planning frameworks and budget execution.
Unless ministries, local authorities, and communities synchronize their planning and funding cycles, these reserved erven risk becoming yet another statistic in Namibia’s backlog of unmet service delivery.
The Budget and Spatial Planning Mismatch
Namibia’s legal framework for spatial planning is anchored in the Urban and Regional Planning Act, 2018, which decentralizes land‐use decisions to local authorities and mandates the reservation of erven for schools, clinics, parks, and other public amenities.
Complementing this, the Local Authorities Act, 1992 empowers councils to include institutional erven in township layouts, but lacks strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure timely development. In many new extensions from Windhoek’s Goreangab to rapidly expanding towns in Oshana and Kavango plots marked for schools or clinics lie fallow, awaiting both funding and inter‐departmental coordination.
In Windhoek’s Goreangab area, flood‐displaced families finally received land for housing, but each morning, their children either walk long distances or pay N$26 for a one‐way taxi trip to the nearest school, an expense beyond many low‐income households.
Despite a decade of planning, the proposed school plot stands empty, a stark reminder that legal designation alone does not guarantee bricks and mortar. The gap between blueprints and budgets often stems from differing planning horizons, Local authorities may approve hundreds of new residential erven in one budget cycle, while the Ministry of Education’s capital projects for those areas only surface in subsequent Medium‐Term Expenditure Frameworks.
Sectoral Impacts: Education and Health
Education and health received some of the largest allocations in the new budget, reflecting their centrality to social development. The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture’s allocation of N$24.8 billion for 2025/26 with N$76.1 billion over the MTEF aims to fund teacher salaries, learning materials, and, crucially, new classrooms and facilities.
Yet, at the start of 2025, 1,200 Grade 8 learners and 641 Grade 1 pupils in Oshana Region were still awaiting placement, forcing the Ministry to continue the platoon system running morning and afternoon shifts to manage overcrowding. This double‐shift model, while keeping schools operational, poses safety risks for children walking home after dark and stretches teacher workloads, undermining learning outcomes.
Healthcare infrastructure lags behind population growth in many informal settlements. Havana, on Windhoek’s periphery, long relied on overburdened Katutura clinics and state hospitals until 2024, when ground was finally broken for a new 500-bed Windhoek District Hospital, budgeted at N$2.9 billion.
This milestone followed years of delays caused by land disputes, funding diversions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and planning setbacks. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Social Services secured N$12.3 billion for 2025/26 including N$780 million dedicated to infrastructure development and N$37.5 billion over the MTEF to reduce overcrowding and improve service quality.
From Paper to Ground: Toward Effective Delivery
Beyond individual sector allocations, the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development (MURD) was granted N$2.7 billion for FY 2025/26 (and N$8.5 billion over the MTEF) to support land servicing, low-cost housing, and municipal amenities.
The Ministry of Works and Transport received a matching N$2.7 billion for the same period to upgrade roads, including rural feeder routes to schools and clinics, with additional funding over the MTEF to sustain network improvements. These cross-sector investments acknowledge that a school building alone is insufficient if children cannot reach it safely, and that clinics must be connected by reliable roads.
Successful projects in Havana and Tumweneni (Rundu) demonstrate the power of collaboration. The Windhoek District Hospital’s progress involved MURD, the Health Ministry, regional councils, and residents working in concert to secure land, funding, and community buy-in, an approach that could be replicated across the country.
In Tumweneni, residents took the initiative to clear and prepare erven for a promised clinic and police station, signalling to authorities that they were ready for development.
Namibia’s 2025/26 budget represents a substantial fiscal commitment to education, health, and urban development. However, money must be matched by meticulous timing and inter-agency coordination.
Ministries must align their budget cycles with local authority planning, tender processes must be transparent and swift, and communities should remain active partners monitoring progress and holding officials accountable.
Only then will those empty plots evolve into thriving hubs of learning and care, ensuring that every Namibian child can walk to a nearby school and every patient can access timely treatment. The blueprint is on the table, the task now is collective execution.
*Alina Amwaama is a Town and Regional Planning practitioner, Urban Development Policy specialist, and strategist in land economics and management.
