25-04-2025
Namibian president announces free higher education, saying 'fees have fallen'
Namibia's new president has announced that university fees will be scrapped from Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, the country's first female president, made the announcement during her maiden state of the nation address on Thursday lawmakers, Nandi-Ndaitwah said that students would pay "no registration [or] tuition fees" at all public universities and technical she said there would not be "significant" extra funding, raising questions about the scheme's feasibility.
Nandi-Ndaitwah said free university education would be phased in gradually and that the only "contribution as families and students for now will be towards accommodation and other related costs"."We have heard your cries: 'the Fees have Fallen'," she said, a reference to previous demands by university students in Namibia, as well as neighbouring South Africa.'We are students thanks to South Africa's #FeesMustFall protests'South Africa #FeesMustFall: Stories behind the protestsShe said the money would come from the subsidies already given to some of the country's public universities and the money allocated to the student financial assistance fund."If we are going to add, we are not going to add a significant [amount of funds]," she and secondary education is already free in all the country's public some student organisations welcomed Nandi-Ndaitwah's announcement, others have criticised it as unfeasible and of these is the Affirmative Repositioning Student Command (ARSC), which said it was just an attention-seeking ploy by the Namibian government."There is no plan, it is just a confused announcement which raises [the] question of what [Nandi-Ndaitwah] means by tertiary education," the organisation told the the ARSC questioned which students would benefit - post-graduates or only undergraduates - as well as where the funding would come from. This echoed sentiments expressed by Tannen Groenewald, an economist who spoke to local news site the Windhoek suggested that scrapping fees without providing extra funding could lead to student numbers being also speculated that it may eventually only apply to students from low-income is what happened in neighbouring South 2017, the government gave in to calls for tertiary education fees to be scrapped which were made during what was known as the #FeesMustFall protests - but only a small number of students has since been criticised as being too restrictive because as the so-called "missing middle", were excluded - those considered too wealthy to qualify for financial aid but who struggle to afford tuition fees.
More BBC stories on Namibia:
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