Half A League Onward

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 25 January, 2018.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward. So 2018 started. But without proper economic reconnaissance, we might as well be following the six hundred into the valley of death. Luckily, we have no need to ride blind – the Bank of Namibia releases Economic Outlook reports to guide us going forward, so we might miss the cannons fired, volley’d and thunder’d.

The latest Bank of Namibia Economic Outlook Update was released in December 2017, and while the global macroeconomic outlook seems stable, our main interest is in the domestic economy for this year. To start with, they revised the estimated economic growth for 2017 downwards from their July 2017 projection of 2.1% to 0.6%, which is even lower than the 1.1% the economy managed in 2016. They do expect growth to improve over the medium term, but still only project growth for 2018 to be 2.2%, and for 2019 to be 3.1%. So for the foreseeable future, growth figures like those during the start of the decade, where we saw growth in the 5%+ range. 

Let’s dig into the different industries to see where these figures come from. Well, the primary industries did well in 2017, showing growth of 10.3%, and is projected to grow 5% in 2018 and 6.5% in 2019. Agriculture and Forestry with expected growth of 8.1%, 1.2% and 4% for 2017, 2018 and 2019 was helped along by good rainfall last year, with growth expected to moderate this year. Fishing, however, is suffering, with an expected contraction of -1.1% for 2017, with growth of 1.6% and 1.8% in 2018 and 2019. 

The mining sector, however, delivered to most growth in 2017, with 15% growth in 2017 and 7.5% and 8.7% expected in 2018 and 2019. While most of this was delivered by diamond mining during 2017, that subsector is expected to register only moderate growth during 2018 and 2019, with the slack being caught by the uranium mining industry. A great deal of uranium growth is expected from the Husab mine, with growth of 40.3% expected in 2019 due to its increased production. Let’s hope this optimism is warranted. 

Secondary industries contracted during 2017, and positive growth is only expected again in 2019. So for 2017, 2018 and 2019, expected growth is -1.1%, -0.6% and 0.6%. Most of this is due to the construction sector that massively contracted during the last few years, as it corrected following the construction boom of 2013. With the end of the accelerated implementation of government infrastructure projects and investment in mining construction slowing as mines become operational, the construction sector declined 26.2% in 2017, with expected declines of 11.2% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2019. 

The manufacturing sector grew by only 1.5% in 2017, but is expected to pick up to 2.5% and 2.6% in 2018 and 2019. During 2017, this was mainly supported by diamond processing, which grew by an impressive 21.9%, but is expected to moderate during 2018 and 2019, while other struggling subsectors such as meat processing and beverages is expected to recover. 

The tertiary industries slowed down during 2017, recording a mere 0.5% growth compared to 3.9% during 2016, but they’re expected to recover with expected growth of 1.8% and 2.5% in 2018 and 2019. The main culprits here remains the Wholesale and Retail Trade sector, which is greatly dependent on overall economic health, and predictably, they contracted by 6.4% during 2017, with a further 1.5% contraction expected in 2018 before returning to positive growth of 0.3% during 2019. 

Hotels and Restaurants slowed during 2017 to 3.5% growth, but they’re expected to recover to 4.7% and 4.4% in 2018 and 2019, boosted by new tourist arrivals from new airlines now operating in Namibia. The Financial Intermediation Sector also slowed to 1.2% during 2017, similarly affected by the general economic malaise, but the sector is expected to make a recovery, growing by 2.9% in 2018 and 2.6% in 2019. 

Monetarily, and in government circles, news also remained a mixed bag. Private Sector Credit Extension continued to slow, in both corporate and household sectors, while government debt grew to 41.2% of GDP. However, Namibia saw a massive improvement on our current account deficit, and our international reserves were boosted by higher SACU receipts and repayment of debts by the Banco Nacional de Angola. As a result, our import cover levels are currently at 5.1 months of imports. 

It is rather obvious that the economy is not running at full steam yet. 2017 may have been a difficult year, but 2018 looks to be a challenging one. So let us not walk blindly while blundering, like the six hundred. Ours is to make reply, we must reason why, for we’re not to do and die. Namibians must stay vigilant, stay informed, and stay focused on performance if we wish to avoid another economic year like 2017. Otherwise we’ll boldly rode and well, into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell… Alongside the six hundred. (With apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson.)

Supply Your Own Light

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 18 January, 2018.

The year 2017 was a hard one. Here, in our own country, we faced an economic recession and political infighting to a level never seen before. Globally, while the world seem to try and recover economically following the long malaise after the credit crunch a decade ago, humanity seems to be more disunited than ever before, with the United States seemingly embracing its President’s approach of ‘America First’ and as such, relinquishing its mantle as ‘Leader of the Free World’ with its actions. Britain is Brexiting, dividing the European Union, and more and more countries seem to be disintegrating from within.

As we enter 2018, everyone seems to feel more and more powerless to affect the way the world is heading, and seem content to wash away in the flood. Yet they are not. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 work, Existentialism, he examines the human condition in the face of an indifferent world, and finds that our most important consideration is to realise that we are individuals – conscious beings independently acting and responsible for those actions – rather than a category, a label, that they think they fit into in society. 

Sartre stated that a person is defined by their actions, and remains responsible for those actions – pretending otherwise is acting in bad faith. Every time a person claims they did something ‘because they had no choice,’ they are acting in bad faith, and purport to make themselves a mere object in the world, even though they are a thinking human being. Every person always has a choice in how they act – they may not have a good choice, hence the want to make themselves an object at the mercy of the world and not responsible for their actions, but they nevertheless always have a choice in their actions. 

When applied against the backdrop of the world, however, we encounter the problem of the Absurd. The Absurd arises because we as human beings naturally seek an inherent value and meaning in life, while the universe is in itself meaningless, or indifferent. Sartre drew upon the works of two other philosophers with differing opinions on resolving the dilemma of the Absurd, Søren Kierkegaard’s work The Sickness Unto Death (1849) and Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) to show our options when faced with this dilemma.

The first of three options when, as a person, we face the meaninglessness of the universe along our own desire to find meaning, is suicide – or escaping existence. This however, is a false solution – Camus and Kierkegaard considered it non-viable, with Camus going as far to say that it does not counter the Absurd, and in fact makes life even more absurd. 

Kierkegaard endorsed the second option – a religious, spiritual or abstract belief in a transcendent realm, being or idea. This is a solution where you come to the belief in a reality beyond the Absurd that has meaning – a belief in an irrational but maybe necessary acceptance in the intangible and empirically unprovable. Kierkegaard referred to this as a ‘leap of faith’. Camus, however, considered this solution as ‘philosophical suicide’.

Camus chose the third option – accepting the Absurd and continuing to live in spite of it. By accepting the Absurd, we, as human beings, can achieve the greatest extent of our own freedom, by recognizing that we have no constraints and fighting against the Absurd while we know it to be inescapable. Through doing this, Camus believed we could construct our own meaning for our lives in the process, and live as people in the world, and not merely objects to be pushed around by it. 

 When we thus take a look at the world around us, seemingly imposing itself on our consciousness and trying to convince us we are powerless to affect it, we should remind ourselves that the world is not malevolent – rather, it is indifferent. More importantly, we are not powerless against it – we can act, and we have a responsibility to act. We are the actors in the great play of life that needs to imbue meaning into a meaningless world. And if my words cannot fully get this message across, perhaps those of Stanley Kubrick will: 

“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism — and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But, if he’s reasonably strong — and lucky — he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. 

Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”