PAUL T. SHIPALE (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar)
“If tomorrow South Africa were to close its commercial borders, how many days would Namibia last?”
The question is uncomfortable but necessary. It starkly exposes the structural fragility of an economy that, despite political and institutional stability, remains deeply dependent on external factors to ensure its basic functioning.
Namibia is often presented as an African success story in terms of governance. However, this narrative overlooks an essential reality: the national economy remains poorly diversified, vulnerable to external shocks, and excessively anchored in asymmetric relationships inherited from the colonial past.
A silent vulnerability
South Africa is Namibia’s main supplier of essential goods. Processed food, fuel, medicines, industrial materials, and consumer goods cross the Orange border daily. While this relationship functions, it conceals a profound structural risk.
Any logistical, economic, or political disruption in the neighbouring country would have immediate effects and produce shortages, rising living costs, and social tension. Not due to any incapacity of the Namibian people, but because the country has yet to build internal productive chains capable of responding to an external rupture.
Imports, consumption and the fragility of domestic production
The Namibian economy consumes more than it produces. Dependence on imports is not merely commercial but also structural. It results from decades without consistent investment in industrialisation, agro-processing, and import substitution.
Without stable external flows, the country would face immediate supply difficulties. This reality reveals a deeper problem: the absence of an economic strategy focused on domestic production and the gradual reduction of external vulnerability.
External and fiscal revenues: an exposed state
Much of the Namibian state’s functioning relies on revenues linked to external trade, mining, and regional fiscal redistribution mechanisms. This dependence limits budgetary autonomy and exposes the country to fluctuations in international markets.
When these revenues decline, the impact is quickly felt in public services, state investment, and social response capacity. Political sovereignty, under such conditions, becomes relative.
Tourism: an unstable pillar
Tourism plays an important role in the Namibian economy, generating jobs and foreign exchange, and we don’t even know if our newly appointed minister, my good friend plucked out of obscurantism from Namcol or NUST, got the memo that tourism is a highly volatile sector, sensitive to global crises, pandemics, and international instability. Recent experience has shown how an economy overly dependent on tourism can rapidly collapse.
Interdependence or dependence?
The problem is not economic interdependence, which is natural in a globalised world, but the absence of internal alternatives when external flows fail.
It is this absence that turns normal economic relationships into structural vulnerabilities.
From diagnosis to strategic choice
Breaking with dependence does not mean isolation, but the gradual construction of autonomy. This inevitably requires:
• gradual import substitution, starting with essential goods;
• serious investment in agro-industry, capable of ensuring food security, creating jobs, and generating internal value.
Without these strategic choices, current stability risks being merely apparent.
Conclusion
Namibia’s struggle to build resilient domestic productive chains stems from its heavy reliance on primary exports, a small industrial base, weak policy execution, limited financing, skills and infrastructure gaps, a small domestic market, and dependence on imported intermediate goods. Until these issues are addressed, productive chains will remain shallow, leaving the economy vulnerable to external shocks.
Namibia does not lack resources, human capital, or political stability. What it lacks is a decisive commitment to transform dependence into productive autonomy.
No country builds autonomy by eternally relying on structures it does not control.
The central question remains: is Namibia preparing to stand on its own feet, or will it continue to manage dependencies that indefinitely postpone its future in a rapidly changing world where conventional diplomacy no longer conforms to tradition? Indeed, someone had to stir the waters, prune the fruits and weed the fields while shaking the old trees of all the old dead leaves!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or this newspaper but are solely our personal views as citizens and pan-Africanists.
