By Luise Mwanyangapo
If you want to see how you can turn an agricultural frustration into an economic opportunity, pay attention when travelling north from Windhoek towards Otjiwarongo.
The landscape tells a story that may not be immediately obvious to everyone. To the casual traveler, the thick stretches of thornbush may seem like an ordinary part of Namibia’s natural vegetation. But for farmers, they are a growing economic problem.
Across vast areas, dense woody vegetation have gradually taken over land where grasses once provided grazing for cattle and other livestock.
This phenomenon, known as bush encroachment, reduces the amount of grass available for livestock, limits the number of animals the land can support and increases the cost of livestock farming.
About 45 million hectares of Namibia is affected by bush encroachment. The Namibia Biomass Industry Group estimates that it costs farmers more than N$2.7 billion a year in lost beef production. The problem extends beyond livestock farming.
Dense bush can also reduce groundwater recharge, adding pressure to the country’s already scarce water resources. Yet this environmental burden also has considerable economic potential.
The same unwanted bush could become a valuable raw material for livestock feed, mushroom production, biochar and other products, opening opportunities for value addition and jobs.
For Namibia, the question now is: How do you restore productive grazing land while turning an unwanted bush into a resource that creates jobs, supports new industries and contributes to economic diversification?
That question goes to the heart of the Sixth National Development Plan (NDP6, 2025–2030) which calls for transformation, not growth alone, in terms of: more value addition, a larger manufacturing base, less dependence on raw exports and an employment rate of 75% by 2030. With the 2023 Labour Force Survey placing unemployment at 36.9% and four in ten young Namibians neither working nor studying, the country simply cannot wait for jobs to arrive from elsewhere. It has to create them from what it already has.
This places universities at the centre of the response, as they are tasked with cultivating this new level of competency.
Times demand that the return on investment in higher education be measured not solely by the number of graduates produced each year, but rather by the problems universities help solve, the innovations they commercialise, and the productivity they unlock.
This is where the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) comes in.
RUFORUM was founded in 2004 by ten (10) African university Vice-Chancellors. Since then, the organisation has grown into Africa’s leading higher agricultural education network, with a membership of 175 universities across 40 African countries and driving agricultural innovation and human capital development.
It was established on the belief that African universities could work collaboratively to strengthen the continent’s capacity to nurture the next generation of African scientific leaders and address Africa’s agricultural and development challenges while harnessing emerging opportunities.
The RUFORUM Secretariat, headquartered at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, coordinates the implementation of the network’s programmes and initiatives.
Namibia has progressively positioned itself within this network. The University of Namibia (UNAM) joined the RUFORUM network in 2010, followed by the International University of Management (IUM) in 2021 and the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in 2024. Between them they hold every piece a value chain needs: UNAM’s agricultural and natural sciences, NUST’s engineering and technology, and IUM’s business and management expertise.
According to RUFORUM figures contained in the programme’s Namibia portfolio, more than N$7.39 million has been invested in research grants to Namibian member universities, supporting work in areas that include indigenous legums and climate-resilient agriculture.
A further N$8.54 million has been invested in human-capital development, including the training of more than 20 scientists at master’s and PhD levels, while 1,075 people have received training in specialised scientific and development practices. Two research projects supported through RUFORUM’s Community Action Research Programme (CARP) at UNAM illustrate what this investment could mean for the country
Project 1: Enhancing Community Adaptation through Climate Resilient Agriculture: Encroacher bushes value chains initiative in Otjozondjupa Region, Namibia
Under the CARP, UNAM researchers worked with communities and partners to test what harvested bush could become. The answers included livestock feed, a substrate for growing mushrooms, fencing poles and biochar to improve soils.
Each product is the first link in a chain of work. Someone has to harvest the bush and transport it. Someone has to chip and mill it. Feed has to be formulated, bagged and sold.
Mushrooms have to be grown and marketed. Biochar has to be produced and sold to farmers and gardeners. The machines need operators, mechanics and spare parts.
The Namibia Biomass Industry Group estimates that bush thinning alone could create about 10,000 jobs a year in mechanical operations, much of it for semi-skilled rural workers.
Please note it is not implied that, university research invented bush harvesting, Namibia already has a growing biomass industry. What the research added is breadth and value: new products, better processes, tested costs and the skilled people needed to run them. In that way, a problem that farmers pay for becomes a resource that pays them.
Project 2: Characterisation of indigenous legumes and their utilisation as pure stands or for oversowing of natural pastures
Another RUFORUM-supported research studied indigenous forage legumes, including wild cowpea, purple savanna pea and velvet bean, that are adapted to Namibia’s heat and low rainfall.
If these plants can be grown reliably and meet the nutritional needs of livestock, they open another local value chain: farmers growing forage, small enterprises multiplying seed, and businesses processing, packaging and selling feed. Every bag grown at home is a bag that does not have to be imported.
Products do not build themselves. Behind every new value chain stands a feed scientist, a process engineer, an agribusiness graduate who can write a credible business plan and a technician who can repair a tractor. That is why RUFORUM’s investment in people matters as much as its research grants.
The network also gives Namibia reach. No single university can hold world-class expertise in every emerging field affecting agriculture, be it from biotechnology, artificial intelligence, to climate science, animal health, renewable energy, food processing and digital agriculture at once.
A network can share it. When Windhoek hosted RUFORUM’s Triennial Conference in August 2024, UNAM signed agreements with Makerere University, the University of South Africa, Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Chinhoyi University of Technology, opening doors to collaborative research and industry links.
For Namibia’s universities, the real value of belonging to an African university network should be measured not simply by the partnerships they establish, but by what those partnerships help the country achieve.
Universities in Namibia should continue to make greater use of these partnerships to contribute to the country’s innovation and economic diversification efforts. This means identifying national agricultural and climate challenges that can be addressed through multidisciplinary research, connecting promising university-developed technologies with industry and investors, strengthening systems to protect and commercialise innovations, and expanding postgraduate training in emerging fields that respond to the evolving demands of the 21st century.
Luise Mwanyangapo is a Marketing and Communications professional. This article is written in her personal capacity.
