Current Status of Namibia

Rossing mine While mining accounts for about a third of Namibia's gross domestic product and for most of the country's exports, only 3 percent of the country is employed by the mining sector.

Women working at Woven Arts of Africa While visiting the weavers we noticed that all the women working were black and the woman running the shop was a German white woman.

Today, the country is made up of a very diverse population of 2,031,000 people. While 87.5 percent of the population is black (includes coloreds), only five percent (primarily white) of the population own 72 percent of the wealth. ^{5, 6} Namibians commonly refer to people of mixed African and European unions as "coloreds". Coloreds have a higher status than blacks and a lower status than whites.

The economy is heavily dependent on mining of minerals such as uranium and diamonds. About three percent of the population is employed by the mining sector while the remainder depends on subsistence agriculture for its livelihood. Fifty five percent of the population lives on only two dollars each day, and 34 percent on only one dollar per day. The unemployment rate is close to 40 percent. ^{5, 6}