Oshikango
| Part city Oshikango
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State Region Constituency |
Namibia Ohangwena Oshikango |
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| Website | helao-nafidi.com | ||
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Political data
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Geographical data
Geographical coordinates : 17 ° 23′47 "S, 15 ° 53′25" E Height : |
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Oshikango is part of the city of Helao Nafidi and the administrative seat of the constituency of Okango in the Ohangwena region in the far north of Namibia .
Oshikango is the center of a vegetation-rich, relatively densely populated and agricultural area and part of the former Ovamboland .
Infrastructure
The place is about 50 kilometers north of Oshakati and as a Namibian border crossing directly on the border with Angola and maintains a border crossing there that is open during the day and is called Santa Clara on the Angolan side . Oshikango forms the northern end of the Namibian national road B1 . In addition, the place has an airfield and a train station with a railway connection on the Tsumeb – Oshikango railway to Tsumeb and other parts of the country.
economy
Current situation
Due to the location on the Angolan-Namibian border, the trade of goods of all kinds played a major role in Oshikango . However, since the beginning of 2012 the place has been affected by an acute withdrawal of shops and residents and is slowly developing into a ghost town.
Since mid-September 2014, the Angolan kwanza has been an officially accepted currency alongside the Namibian dollar . The Namibian government hopes that this will stimulate border trade again.
Situation before 2012
Oshikango is located directly on the consistently well-developed north-south road connection from the Namibian-Angolan border to South Africa , from which it benefited sustainably in terms of its current character as a trading center. The city is particularly frequented by affluent Angolans.
At times there was a real boom in this regard in Oshikango . The fact that in Angola, after decades of civil war, there is now an enormous need for consumer goods on the one hand and, on the other hand, trade centers such as Oshikango are still easier to reach for southern Angolans than the Angolan capital Luanda due to the inner-Angolan infrastructure that has been destroyed in many cases as a result of the war , contributed significantly this boom: Until 1996, before the economic boom started, Oshikango consisted of only a few houses and a school .
However, because Angolan nationals are no longer allowed to export US dollars unhindered from their country, sales in local trade have recently declined somewhat (2009). This development has been observed since around 2003. In addition, because most imports are paid for in US dollars, the cost of importing goods for traders has increased in recent years due to a progressive decline in the value of the US dollar, as local buyers mainly Namibian or South African dollars Use the edge to pay.
In addition to some Namibian entrepreneurs, a large number of Angolan and, above all, Chinese merchants have settled in Oshikango over the years. The first Chinese dealer in Oshikango, which settled here in 1999, was followed by numerous others in a few years. For the Chinese merchants who are active in Oshikango, the Angolans are by far the most important customer base in terms of sales, although Namibians are of course also among their customers. The construction of new shopping centers and warehouses continues unabated to this day (2009). In 2009 a new shopping center called "China Town" was built in Oshikango, which houses another 70 Chinese shops.
The informal sector is also very well represented in Oshikango and tries to get out of the high traffic in the city, e.g. B. by truck drivers to capitalize on. The informal sector mainly focuses on the sale of food and groceries.
Today (2005) the used car market in Oshikango is mainly controlled by Pakistanis, who, besides the Chinese, represent another, not insignificant, minority in the city. In addition, there are Portuguese families in Oshikango who, after the end of the Portuguese colonial period in Angola in 1974/75, moved to today's Namibia and are now actively involved in local economic activities.
See also
Web links
- Jonathan Crush: Northern Gateway: Cross Border Migration Between Namibia and Angola. Report on border traffic between Angola and Namibia. (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Oshikango: A busy place, but business is falling. In: Allgemeine Zeitung. Namibia, 2009.
- ^ Oshikango turns into ghost town. The Namibian, August 8, 2014. Retrieved September 26, 2014
- ↑ Trade in kwanza may extend beyond Oshikango. The Namibian, September 25, 2014 ( memento from September 26, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) accessed on September 26, 2014
- ^ A b c d e G. Dobler: South-South business relations in practice: Chinese merchants in Oshikango. (PDF; 146 kB) Namibia 2005. (English)
- ^ AY Baah, H. Jauch: Chinese Investments in Africa: A Labor Perspective. (PDF; 2.3 MB) 2009. (English)
Coordinates: 17 ° 24 ' S , 15 ° 53' E