The Minister of Agriculture, Water, and Land Reform says only about half the population has access to proper toilet facilities.

Speaking during the President's media briefing earlier in the week, minister Carl Schlettwein said sanitation is a prerequisite for development.

Namibia is lagging behind in UN Social Development Goal 6 on sanitation.

Carl Schlettwein says no one will invest in an area where no sanitation is available.

To address the backlog in sanitation, the Ministry currently has 23 projects running, involving youth to build sanitation facilities at schools and clinics around the country.

The programme has been rolled out, supported, and funded. We can and must accelerate to bring about desalination in informal settlements around big towns and cities, where it can really fly into our faces. If we are not tackling it, sanitation problems in Windhoek are polluting our surface water resources.

Turning to agriculture, Schlettwein says the industry has been in recovery since 2021 and has been growing consistently since then.

However, geopolitical situations are posing a challenge to the sector. Food prices have skyrocketed.

But, unfortunately, what has happened is that food prices, that is, consumer prices for food, have increased sharply on the one hand, but on the other hand, there is a reduction in prices for producers. The price of maize and grain has decreased by N$1000 per tonne this year. So the economy is not helping. We have two losses: one loss in consumption because of higher prices and one loss in producer prices. So it is very difficult at the moment to instill growth in the sector if that situation is prevailing.

On the livestock side, there is also positive growth, but there are challenges such as drought, foot and mouth outbreaks that resulted in border closure for the movement of livestock and dumping of beef in the European market, affecting Namibia's exports to that market.