Windhoek to redefine land expropriation policy

Namibia will expropriate land owned by foreign absentee landlords and will redefine fair compensation in the coming months. A report on the EWN site notes that President Hage Geingob made the promise at the conclusion of the country’s National Land Conference on Friday. ‘Current landowners must make more land available for sale and not only barren land. The conference gave us a clear mandate to proceed with expropriation of land owned by absentee landlords, as well as underutilised land,’ he said. Geingob said his government would ‘unpack and define just compensation in order to deal with the stumbling blocks we experienced in the past’. He also warned that land reform must be carried out in an orderly fashion and within the confines of the constitution. A report tabled at the conference said 995 000 people out of Namibia's total population of 2.4m live in informal settlements.