Rosa Marina Johnson

In north-est Namibia, the Bwabwata National Park hosts San communities who are among the most marginalised people in the country. Despite residing on their ancestral land, conservation policies heavily affect their livelihood strategies so that recent literature referred to them as living in an estranged country where changes in the environment are beyond their control. Yet, their resilience is strong and the San communities have adopted flexible strategies, employing local skills and ways of knowing that helped them adapt to such changes. Our approach focuses on cultural tangible/intangible competences that the very communities value and wish to preserve; and on educational/vocational needs they perceive as relevant to access the labour market. Arising from an interdisciplinary interaction among academic members, the team includes also non-academic partners who are engaged members of the San communities. Together we wish to co-produce knowledge that reflects needs, abilities, aspirations and coping strategies that emerge from intense dialogues between academic and non academic, San and non-San partners. Acknowledging the epistemic subjectivity of the community members, their ability and expertise to select common goals and co-construct a way forward to ameliorate their socio-economic conditions, we hope this project bring positive changes to the communities.