Prepared in cooperation with the South East Consortium for International Development, this is a substantial paper. It concentrates mainly on capitalist stock-farming and peasant agriculture appears only incidentally. Brief mention is also made of the fishing industry. The analysis, framed in terms of orthodox market economics, proceeds from a general geographical and political introduction to a survey of the present situation in agriculture. The data presented, although competently arranged, are limited by reliance on the small and often out-of-date range of published English-language literature. The report concludes with a brief assessment of constraints and priorities in post-independence agricultural development, concentrating on technical, institutional and environmental factors rather than political issues such as land tenure and income distribution. It advocates greater stock-farming output and the commercialization of crop production in the northern bantustans. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).

Based on the work of J J Oloya, I Miclaus, F A Ishengoma and K Aho.

This is one of the more sophisticated analyses of a rapidly-growing genre and, because produced at Namibia's main external research centre, likely to be the most influential with Namibian economic planners. The discussion is equally balanced between the structure and trends in present-day agriculture and policy-options for long-term development. The first part of the study is devoted to natural environment and ecology, as well as the present economic and institutional structures (land distribution, ownership, income, numbers and skills of workers, marketing, transport, training and research facilities). The author's agronomic expertise is evident, and the documentary evidence has been reinforced by the direct experience of rural Namibians. In the second half, a thoughtful structural analysis of economic exploitation, constraints and development priorities leads to an extended appraisal of alternative forms of land tenure and production organization - freehold, communal, tenancy from the state, cooperative, collective, state farms - with a broad survey of comparative African experience. Both the political goals of the liberation movement and the political and economic realities of post-independence Namibia are closely integrated into the discussion. A final brief chapter assesses a number of policy issues common to all variants of agrarian reform. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).