SHERWOOD Anderson once said ‘The lives of people are like young trees in a forest, they are being choked by climbing vines.
The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.’ This famous quote seems to be the guiding principle at most universities in Africa and at Unam in particular. I am a final-year economics student there. For the past few years we have been learning and forced to memorise the western economist theories such as ‘the quantity theory of money’ that revolves around the prominent work of Irvin Fischer; ‘Keynesian liquidity preference theory’ by the famous John Maynard Keynes and many others. I admit these guys were the best and their theories worked back then, but as the saying goes ‘all good things come to an end’ and these old theories are now outdated and can no longer be accommodated in our modern economy. One can argue that these theories are still the best but why can’t we use them to solve high unemployment rate in Namibia? Why can’t we use one of these western theories to reduce income inequality in Namibia? My main concern is the failure by Unam management in general and economics department in particular to provide us future economists with a platform and opportunities to do research and develop our own theories that are suitable for our own economy since recent economists have failed miserably and have resorted to modifying Keynesian and Fischer theories. The problem is we depend too much on the western theories in almost everything, and this in turn is the reason why Africa continues to depend on the western nations for almost everything. As we are about to embark on our degree’s research project I know for a fact that our supervisors will not let us choose topics such as ‘The Namibian taxi industry’s contribution to GDP’. They will tell you you will not get literature to support your arguments when what they really mean is there is no western literature published on the Namibian taxi industry. This makes a degree research project at Unam just a routine that you have to go through to get your degree with no real intention of discovering new problems and solutions to our economy. Now they advise us to revolve around topics that were researched a million times, just because they have failed to come up with something of their own originality does not mean we cannot do it as well. My main point is we should be taught about the Keynes and Fischers only to build our foundation, to prove to us that critical economic research can be done and solutions can be found but not to memorise these outdated theories. Unam should come up with a consortium engaging institutions such as the Bank of Namibia, IPPR and other economics institutions that can for instance be chaired by local economist Robin Shebourne to provide mentorship and financial assistance to young aspiring economists willing to undertake research and develop their own theories that will help in contributing to the positive growth of our economy.Who said we are not more intelligent than the Fischers and Keynes? With the right investment and excellent mentorship we can do it. You are denying us an opportunity to become famous. Elia PaavoVia e-mail
