Stop Producing Teachers for the Streets – By Tjihinga Edward
By TUW
Namibia must confront an uncomfortable truth:
We are producing teachers for unemployment.
Year after year, institutions like the University of Namibia graduate qualified education professionals — trained, assessed, certified and declared ready to shape the nation’s future.
And then we send them home.
Not for a month.
Not for a short transition period.
For years.
Some of these graduates have been unemployed for three, four, even five years ; waiting for posts that never come. Waiting for calls that never arrive. Waiting for a system that seems indifferent to their existence.
This is no longer a labour market issue.
This is a national planning failure.
How do we speak about educational reform while trained teachers sit idle?
How do we talk about improving learning outcomes while classrooms in certain regions remain overcrowded?
How do we justify budget allocations to training programmes when there is no absorption strategy?
We cannot continue pretending this is normal.
It is reckless to expand education enrolment without a corresponding employment framework. It is irresponsible to encourage young people to pursue teaching without a structured pathway into the system. It is dangerous to create a generation of qualified but economically stranded professionals.
Let us be honest: unemployment among teachers is not just an economic issue. It is a dignity issue.
These graduates invested years of their lives. Families sacrificed. Loans were taken. Expectations were built.
Now what?
Silence.
No national audit publicly presented.
No transparent teacher-demand forecasting.
No structured graduate internship pipeline.
No aggressive rural deployment incentives.
Instead, we normalize waiting.
We normalize stagnation.
We normalize waste.
And while this happens, we expect young people to remain patient, optimistic and peaceful.
A country that abandons its educators is undermining its own foundation.
Teachers are not excess labour. They are nation-builders. They are literacy drivers. They are the backbone of social mobility. When they are unemployed, it is not just their lives that stall; it is the country’s development that slows.
The contradiction is glaring.
We say education is a priority.
Yet we leave educators stranded.
We say youth empowerment matters.
Yet we abandon qualified young professionals.
We say we want a knowledge-based economy.
Yet we fail to strategically manage the very workforce required to build it.
History will not be kind about this chapter.
It will ask why a country with educational challenges allowed trained teachers to sit at home.
It will ask why planning did not match production.
It will ask why silence prevailed where urgency was required.
And the most uncomfortable question of all:
Are we training teachers to educate children or to decorate unemployment statistics?
Namibia must choose.
Either we align training with absorption, introduce structured national graduate deployment programmes, conduct transparent teacher-demand audits, and incentivize service in underserved regions
Or we admit that we are producing hope without opportunity.
The time for polite conversation has passed.
We owe our educators clarity.
We owe our graduates structure.
We owe our nation better planning.
Because a country that treats its teachers as disposable is not preparing for the future.
It is dismantling it.
And history will remember us.
Disclaimer:
This content represents the personal views of Tjihinga Edward. It does not represent the views, opinions, or editorial stance of The Updated World.
