Arandis Town Council â € “ Championing Gender Equality

The town of Arandis was established in the late seventies (1976) to house close to five thousand workers who worked on the mine. The town totally depended on the mine which subsidized all the services to the inhabitants, hence the economic responsibility rested with the mining authorities. Shortly after independence the town was handed to the Namibian government and in 1994 it was declared a town. The scope of operations and the fact that it was now managed by a town council came with its own problems viz; the payment of rates and taxes was now the responsibility of the community members a transformation that nearly crippled the economic activities of the town. The history of mining towns becoming ghostsâ € ™ towns was the order of talk amongst community members and it painted a very bleak picture when it comes to trying to convince investors to invest in ArandisMining Town, Dac, and Led Arandis is one of the top centres of excellence

This was worsening because most of the mine workers were affected when the mine retrenched close to half of their workforce during 1990. Vigorous interventions to boost economic activity has to be introduced to safe the town from becoming a ghost town and ways of trying to filter the economy to at least sustain the livelihoods of the few people who remained in Arandis.

The continued escalation of the towns economy was a real threat to the developmental goals for Namibia as set out in Vision 2030 as well as investors whom lost faith to invest in Arandis, this let to the birth of the Local Econominic Development Strategy/Intervention, that had extensive consultation with stakeholders and the community to look at ways and means of transforming and diversifying the economy which was male dominated by the time.

More women started to form groups and associations to try and become financially independent from their partners. It was imperative to support and empower the women so that they are able to withstand the onslaught of the economic discrepancy that was negatively affecting familyâ € ™s dependency on the male counterparts.

These programs included training to women in dressmaking and tailoring, hospitality, food production, business entrepreneurship mentoring, community peer education programs, plus life skills couching programs to mentions but a few.

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