THE Namibian government announced this week that unemployment had now grown to 35% of the country’s labour force, with women making up the majority of those without jobs. A spokesman for the Ministry of Youth and Sport said on Tuesday that the “strict, nationwide” unemployment figure stands at around 21%. But he said that the figures were under review because the job market was annually able to absorb only a quarter of the nation’s school-leavers. “When it comes to the issue of youth development in Namibia, the picture is bleak indeed,” minister of youth Richard Kapelwa Kabajani said. “This is a situation which has been with us since independence in 1990,” said an economist at the Chamber of Commerce. “The economy is not growing fast enough and the job market is saturated. We have people streaming into Windhoek everyday from the countryside looking for work.”