Young people are underrepresented in the tour guide subsector nationwide.
A survey by the Environment, Forestry, and Tourism Ministry (MEFT) indicates that out of 500 registered tour guides, 17% are youth between the ages of 18 and 34.
MEFT carried out a survey to help register and accredit all tour guides in Namibia.
One of the findings indicated that the youth are finding it difficult to take up job opportunities in the tour guide subsector.
"Why are the youth not there? So it could be that the training is either expensive or we are training at a level where they cannot enter. We'll get to the bottom of it," said Sebulon Chicalu, the ministry's Director of Tourism and Gaming.
The statistics were presented at the first-ever National Tourist Guides Workshop at Walvis Bay.
The event brought together tour guides in the country, policymakers, and academia to develop a framework for the subsector.
"It's important for our country, especially tourism, especially after the COVID, so we want to organize the sector, we want to make sure the standards are in place, so that our guests are happy, and it helps us expand the tourism sector because if professionalism is so good and so well, the satisfaction level of our clients will be increased in that as well, and we will have more clients coming in because of the professionalism of the guides."
Chicalu identified access to training as one of the main challenges facing young guards and indicated that the framework being developed should address the challenge.
"So we will have to do two things, one is on the training side for the youth, but also looking at the cost of training, which we will also have to tackle here, to say NUST is training, how much are you charging? Is it affordable? Number three, are we not able to introduce some layers of training? For example, we have a national guide; you saw the statistics are high; but we also need to open up doors for training for side guides, field guides, local guides, and so on, so that the entry becomes a bit larger."
Apart from youth underrepresentation in the sector, women are in the same predicament with only 12%.