“The younger cousin declared that one day he will own his own airline with five planes. The older cousin laughed uncontrollably and said, ‘Look at you and where you are. Just an hour ago you were asking for taxi money, and now you’re making embarrassing exclamations about your life.’ Clearly deflated, the younger cousin fell silent. I then asked the elder cousin, still living in his parents’ house in the village, holding a tertiary qualification, but moving from one drinking hole to another, what his plans were. Without hesitation he said, ‘Well, I tell you, cousin, one day when I grow up I will make it big in life.’”
I recount this conversation not as family gossip but as a diagnosis. As a Namibian entrepreneur, I have come to recognise that this exchange captures our national condition with uncomfortable precision. It is a mirror held up to a country that has invested in education, produced thousands of graduates, expanded infrastructure, stabilised governance, and yet remains hesitant, risk-averse, and emotionally allergic to audacious ambition. We are the older cousin: qualified but motionless, sceptical of boldness, postponing greatness to a distant tomorrow.
The teenage cousin’s dream of owning an airline may sound implausible. But implausibility is the birthplace of progress. At some point, it was implausible that a South African-born entrepreneur would build a global payments empire from a small fintech start-up, yet Elon Musk and Patrick Collison did precisely that with PayPal. It was implausible that a war-ravaged South Korea would become a global technology powerhouse, yet today Samsung and Hyundai shape global markets. It was implausible that a tiny Baltic nation like Estonia could become a world leader in digital governance, yet it now runs one of the most advanced e-government systems on earth.
None of these transformations began with realism. They began as unreasonable people, mocked in their early days, dismissed as dreamers, and tolerated until they could no longer be ignored. History consistently sides with those who dare to imagine beyond their circumstances.
Namibia, however, has quietly cultivated a culture where ambition is met with ridicule, not mentorship. We warn young people to “be realistic”, a phrase that often means “know your place”. We reward compliance more than creativity and safety more than exploration. Our educational system produces credentialed graduates but does little to ignite hunger for invention. The result is a generation that aspires to employment rather than enterprise, stability rather than scale, and comfort rather than conquest.
This is not a critique of individuals. It is a critique of national psychology.
We have all met the older cousin. The qualified young adult with potential who delays action indefinitely. The civil servant is waiting for promotion instead of building solutions. The graduate who dreams of a tender rather than a product. The entrepreneur who fears expansion because failure would be socially embarrassing. We have normalised smallness. We have built an ecosystem where dreaming big is considered arrogance, not ambition.
Contrast this with countries that deliberately engineered cultures of boldness. Israel turned scarcity into innovation, becoming a global start-up hub despite limited natural resources. China lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty through relentless industrial ambition and strategic long-term planning. The United Arab Emirates reimagined a desert economy into a global logistics, tourism, and technology hub. These nations were not more gifted than Namibia. They simply decided that limitation was temporary, not destiny.
Meanwhile, Namibia sits on extraordinary assets: political stability, rich natural resources, a young population, and strategic geographic positioning. But assets do not automatically produce progress. Only imagination applied with discipline does that.
The older cousin’s most tragic line is, “One day when I grow up I will make it big in life.” He is already grown. Yet he speaks as if ambition is an event that will arrive later, rather than a decision made now. That is Namibia’s risk: eternal preparation without execution. Vision statements without urgency. Development plans without disruptive intent. Conferences without consequence.
The younger cousin’s airline dream matters not because he will certainly own five planes, but because he has not yet surrendered to the tyranny of current circumstances. He sees possibility where others see limitation. That psychological posture is the seed of innovation economies. Nations that prosper protect such sparks. Nations that stagnate extinguish themselves through mockery and discouragement.
Of course, dreaming big must be matched by competence, planning, and resilience. Vision without discipline is fantasy. But discipline without vision is stagnation. Namibia has invested in schooling, universities, and vocational training. Yet we have underinvested in cultivating entrepreneurial ecosystems, venture funding culture, innovation hubs, mentorship networks, and, most importantly, a national permission to be audacious.
As an entrepreneur, I know that the biggest barrier to progress is rarely money. It is a mindset. Capital follows conviction. Investors follow vision. Markets respond to courage. But you cannot scale a nation that is emotionally committed to modesty.
So Namibia faces a choice. Do we remain the older cousin, educated, capable, cynical, postponing greatness until some undefined future? Or do we nurture the younger cousin, bold, imaginative, unashamed of big dreams, and willing to risk failure for scale?
The world is entering an era driven by artificial intelligence, green energy revolutions, digital finance, and biotechnology. Countries that hesitate will import solutions. Countries that dream boldly will design them. Namibia must decide whether it will consume the future or create it.
To dream big is not arrogance. It is a responsibility to potential. It is loyalty to the next generation. It is the refusal to waste opportunity.
So the question remains: Which Namibia are we? The one laughing at ambition from the safety of smallness? Or the one daring to imagine five aeroplanes and building the runway to make them fly?
