The national development plan for Namibia, which envisages the country to be an industrialized nation with only 2.3% of unemployment, needed the education of thousands of academics, the vice-chancellor of UNAM said last week. Prof. Lazarus Angula announced that strategic planning for study capacities with regard to finances, lecturers and students was necessary for the next 25 years to achieve Vision 2030. As a result e special task team consisting of UNAM lecturers had been created to start long-term planning academically and financially. He recounted the appeal of former President Nujoma who at the launch of Vision 2003 last year said that Namibia inter alia needed 5000 engineers, 5000 economists, 3000 agricultural experts, 2000 accountants and 1000 architects by the year 2030. Those figures compared with the professional needs assessed by the National Planning Commission, Hangula said.

By early next year the UNAM task team would start mapping out the way forward, the vice-chancellor noted.