Ounongo Repository
The Ounongo Repository (OR) is the institutional repository of Namibia University of Science and Technology. Ounongo means "knowledge. in the Oshiwambo and Otjiherero languages. The OR is administered by the Library, with technical assistance from DICT, and its aim is to collect, organize, manage, store, preserve, publish and make accessible worldwide, the knowledge assets or intellectual output of the University's researchers, staff and post-graduate students. Users may set up RSS feeds to be alerted to new content.
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An investigation into factors affecting the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia: A case study of Onghalulu farmers' cooperative, Ohangwena region, Namibia
(2024-02) Kadhikwa, Wilikeni, Nampala
The aim of the study was to investigate factors affecting the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia, with the Onghalulu Farmers’ Cooperative being a case study. The study addressed external and internal factors that primarily affect the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia and that of the Onghalulu Farmers’ Cooperative specifically. The problems identified in the study include those related to the market, finances, collaboration, governance, leadership, stakeholder engagement, environmental factors, compliance, mentorship and training programmes, infrastructure development, adoption of advanced technology, investments in research and development, and other issues influencing the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia. The study noted that the emphasised problems still plague some Namibian agricultural cooperatives, primarily due to cooperative stakeholders' poor commitment to resolving the issues that they face and their resistance to accepting change. Moreover, some traditional beliefs hinder the commercial operations of agricultural cooperatives, as well as their capacity to follow rules and regulations, and the cooperatives' continued dependence on government support and donors. Additionally, due to the lack of political will, the government regularly allocates insufficient funds for agricultural projects that support cooperative initiatives, thereby financially starving the sector. In addition, climate change continuously impacts cooperative farmers' productivity, and as a result, the marginalised community members, youth, and women are underrepresented in cooperative initiatives. Using a case study design and a qualitative research methodology, the study collected primary data from 15 participants using open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. A purposive sampling method was used to choose participants as cases with rich and thorough insights about the study constructs. The study was guided by a theoretical framework including collective action and signalling theory to highlight cooperative principles, environmental sustainability governance (ESG), and economic sustainability performance (ESP). The study findings revealed that Onghalulu Farmers’ Cooperative practices mixed farming, combining agribusiness with different farming activities. It was found that some internal and external factors impact Namibia's agricultural cooperative’s survival ability. Besides, it was determined that efficiently run agricultural cooperatives improve members' quality of life and significantly advance the sustainable growth of the cooperative. The study offered some recommendations to minimise the obstacles identified and enhance the sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia. As such, the study findings enrich the existing literature about agricultural cooperatives and provide valuable information to cooperative stakeholders about supporting the resilience and sustainability of agricultural cooperatives in Namibia.
An investigation into the factors affecting strategic change in the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment creation, Namibia
(2024-03) Sheehama, Veneranda Kandekeleni
The purpose of the study was to look into the variables influencing the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation in Windhoek as it implements a strategic change. The investigation was conducted using a qualitative research methodology. Only sixty-five (65) employees from Windhoek's Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations, and Employment Creation made up the study’s population. The Office of the Labour Commissioner, Planning and Administration, and Labour Services were the three (3) Directorates from which the sample for this study was drawn. The study’s ten (10) participants were selected through the use of a purposeful sampling technique. Semi-structured interviews were used as the data gathering tool in this study. Data analysis was done using the ATLAS.ti application suite. The outcomes demonstrated that the implementation of strategic change processes can be impacted by employee attitudes. This is due to the fact that each employee has a unique temperament, set of sentiments, and perspective on change, all of which affect how they feel about change and how change procedures affect them. The findings of this study also established the existence of significant influence of leadership visibility on and strategic change management within the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation in Windhoek. This implies that leadership is crucial for change projects within a company to be successful. The study has shown that organizational culture has a big impact on managing strategic change, which is especially true in a world in which there are several complex cultures and subcultures. It was believed that articulating the necessity and justification for the change was essential for its successful implementation. The study has shown that realistic goal-setting is crucial and must be based on striking a realistic balance between the project's strategic goals and the necessary resources that are within the Ministry's capacity. The Government of Namibia should conduct organizational diagnosis through the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation in order to institutionalize change techniques in the public sector, according to the findings. The public sector's organizational structure should be firmly rooted in strategic change management techniques. The public sector should treat each aspect influencing change management techniques as a temporary fix.
A first syntaxonomic description of the vegetation of the Karstveld in Namibia.
(Vegetation Classification and Survey/Pensoft Publishers, 2023-10-24) Strohbach, Ben J.; Strohbach, Marianne M.
Aims: The Karstveld in Namibia has been recognized as an area of high plant diversity. However, this area is also recog nised as a hotspot of various forms of degradation including bush encroachment. Minimal baseline data on the compo sition and diversity of vegetation in this area is available, therefore this paper is a first attempt to rectify this data defi ciency. Study area: The Karstveld in Namibia is formed around the Otavi Mountain Range in northern Central Namibia,
consisting of strongly karstified carbonate bedrock, rising up to 2000 m a.s.l. The Karstveld includes the Ovambo Basin
plains with shallow calcrete soils north of the range, up to the Omuramba Ovambo. Because of orographic effects, the
area receives some of the highest rainfall in Namibia, with up to 600 mm per year. Methods: A set of 889 relevés with
868 species was selected from the GVID ID AF-NA-001 database. A partial data set, using trees, shrubs, dwarf shrubs
and grasses only, was used for the classification with modified TWINSPAN. The initial result yielded four main groups,
according to which the data was split and further classified. Several vegetation types observed during field surveys were
not reflected in the classification results; these were refined using Cocktail with known characteristic species. Results:
The four main units represented wetlands and grasslands with six associations, a Thornbush savanna – Karstveld tran sition zone with four associations, Kalahari vegetation with four associations and the Karstveld proper with eight asso ciations. The latter are grouped together as the Terminalietea prunioides, with two orders and three alliances recognised
under them. We describe 16 associations according to the ICPN. Conclusions: Although the associations presented in
this paper are clearly defined, there exists a high degree of diversity within these. The Karstveld is also extraordinary
species rich within the context of the arid to semi-arid Namibian environment.
Taxonomic reference: Klaassen and Kwembeya (2013) for vascular plants, with the exception of the genus Acacia s.l.
(Fabaceae), for which Kyalangalilwa et al. (2013) was followed.
Abbreviations: ga = annual grass; gp = perennial grass; GPS = Global Positioning System, referring to a hand-held
ground receiver; hl = herb layer, containing all hemicryptophytes, therophytes and geophytes, but excluding grasses
(Poaceae); ICPN = International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (Theurillat et al. 2021); MAP = mean annual
precipitation; NMS = nonmetric multidimensional scaling (Kruskal 1964); RDL = Red Data List (IUCN Species Survival
Commission 2001); s1 = tall shrubs, i.e. multi-stemmed phanerophytes between 1 and 5 m; s2 = short shrubs, i.e. cha maephytes or ‘dwarf shrubs’ below 1 m; SOTER = Global and National Soils and Terrain Digital Database (FAO 1993);
t1 = tall trees, > 10 m; t2 = short trees, between 5 and 10 m; t3 = low trees, i.e. single-stemmed phanerophytes between
2 and 5 m; TWINSPAN = Two Way Indicator Species Analysis (Roleček et al. 2009); WGS84 = World Geodetic System,
1984 ensembl
Predicting International Tourist Arrivals in Namibia Using Machine Learning
(2024-08) Shivute, Selma
The lack of accurate and timely predictions for international tourist arrivals in Namibia remains
an open problem, leading to inefficiencies in tourism planning and resource allocation. Traditional
methods, primarily based on seasonal trends and historical data, dominate the forecasting
landscape. Although traditional approaches are good at capturing seasonal patterns, there is always
a lack of accounting for more dynamic and non-linear interactions between the predictive variables
and more reliable results.
In recent years, machine learning models like Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average
(SARIMA), Random Forest, and Prophet have gained increasing support for their ability to handle
complex, non-linear data and provide more accurate tourist arrival forecasts. SARIMA is
particularly good at modelling seasonal time series data, Random Forest excels in capturing nonlinear relationships, and Prophet is designed to handle time series data as well as irregular and
missing data. However, attempts to implement these three models in predicting international
tourist arrivals in the Namibian context have exposed limitations such as a constant prediction with
Random Forest and the need for extensive tuning in SARIMA and Prophet, which may result in
their prediction accuracy showing little improvements in Namibia’s tourism sector.
This study aimed to develop and test the three models: SARIMA, Random Forest, and Prophet, to
predict international tourist arrivals in Namibia more accurately. Accurate forecasts can improve
decision-making within the tourism sector, infrastructure planning and resource allocation. The
methodology used involved data preparation and data exploratory strategies to determine the
relationship between exploratory variables and dependent variables. It also included training and
validating these models on historical data obtained from the Ministry of Home Affairs,
Immigration, Safety and Security. The models were hyper-tuned to overcome the limitations of
accuracy by improving accurate predictions.
It is expected that these models will overcome the limitations of non-accuracy predictions of tourist
arrivals. The effectiveness of these models' accuracy was evaluated using Root Mean Square Error
and Mean Absolute Error and comparing their performance against each other to determine the
preferred model for Namibia. The results indicated that SARIMA achieved the most accurate
prediction, followed by Random Forest, and Prophet performed poorly in predicting international
visitor arrivals in Namibia. The two models are anticipated to contribute significantly to more
efficient tourism management and planning in Namibia.
ASSESSING THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AT THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS, IMMIGRATION, SAFETY AND SECURITY IN NAMIBIA
(Namibia University of Science and Technology, 2021-05-04) KADHIKWA, SAKEUS IITA.
Internal communication has long been the lifeblood of successfully and effectively managed
organizations, especially when such communication is strategically managed. Though
literature has established the benefits of internal communication, especially when it comes to
employee engagement, commitment, and improved corporate reputation, research assessing
the strategic role of internal communication in government departments is limited. The aim of
the study was to assess the strategic role of internal communication at the ministry of Home
Affairs, Immigration, Safety and Security in Namibia. To achieve this objective, four
secondary objectives were pursued. The first secondary objective focused on examining the
challenges faced by the Department of Home Affairs and Immigration in implementing the
internal communication strategy. The second objective focused on analysing the impact of
internal communication on service delivery, while the third focused on internal communication
and employee morale. The last objective examined the alignment between internal
communication and the department’s strategy.
Data for the study were collected using a structured interview guide. Face-to-face online were
conducted with a conveniently selected sample of 25 participants. The methodology that was
employed was a qualitative research approach that followed a case study research design.
Several challenges affecting the effective implementation of the internal communication
strategy were identified. Furthermore, it was noted that participants had mixed views about the
role of internal communication and service delivery, as well as its strategic role in the
organisation. Based on these findings, the study makes recommendations and suggestions for
future research.