For far too long, Namibia has danced around the issue of black economic empowerment, turning what should have been a sober national conversation into a shallow talking point. Government after government has touted policies, programmes, and slogans meant to uplift black entrepreneurs, but when you strip away the rhetoric, what’s left is a system that continues to strangle black business while protecting entrenched privilege.
You cannot claim to be pro-development while simultaneously being anti–black business. The two positions are fundamentally incompatible. Yet that is exactly where Namibia finds itself today, where black entrepreneurs are publicly vilified as “tenderpreneurs”, where every black-owned venture is viewed with suspicion, and where success by a black Namibian is too often equated with corruption rather than competence.
The hypocrisy of “pro-development” rhetoric
Every speech about “economic transformation” rings hollow when black business owners continue to face bureaucratic chokeholds, limited access to finance, and a policy environment that treats them as problems rather than partners.
We celebrate “foreign direct investment” with red carpets and press conferences, yet we subject local investors, particularly black ones, to endless red tape and humiliation at the hands of our own institutions. Banks demand collateral that the average first-generation entrepreneur cannot produce, while state tenders remain concentrated in a few politically connected hands.
If the government were serious about inclusive development, it would not be afraid to ask the hard questions:
- Why is so much of our national wealth still owned and controlled by foreign or minority interests more than 30 years after independence?
- Why are black Namibians still confined to the lower rungs of value chains in key industries such as mining, retail, and construction?
- Why does the government continue to romanticise “partnerships” that extract value out of the country through capital flight and transfer pricing, while blaming local businesses for unemployment?
The real economic thieves
We must stop scapegoating black business for the sins of a broken system. The real leakage in our economy does not come from a few overpriced government contracts or an overzealous SME. It comes from the billions of dollars quietly syphoned out of the country each year through transfer pricing, profit repatriation, and capital flight.
Global corporations manipulate prices between their subsidiaries to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. Foreign-owned companies repatriate profits while leaving behind poorly paid jobs and depleted natural resources. Meanwhile, our own entrepreneurs, who actually reinvest in Namibia, who employ fellow citizens, who live and spend here, are treated like criminals for daring to make money.
Let’s have that “unusual conversation”, the one government avoids because it’s politically uncomfortable. Let’s talk about why our tax laws remain toothless against multinational manipulation. Let’s talk about why the financial system still doesn’t prioritise lending to black-owned businesses. Let’s talk about why empowerment has become synonymous with dependency rather than ownership.
The “tenderpreneur” myth
Few terms have done more damage to the national psyche than “tenderpreneur”. It has been used to delegitimise every black entrepreneur who has succeeded within the state procurement system, as if public procurement itself were a crime.
The truth is, every economy in the world, from the United States to South Korea, used government contracts as a springboard for local industrialisation. In postwar Japan, Toyota and Mitsubishi built empires on state procurement. In the U.S., the Pentagon’s defence contracts birthed Silicon Valley.
So why is it suddenly criminal when a black Namibian company wins a tender? Why are we not building capacity around these entrepreneurs, helping them evolve from suppliers to manufacturers, from middlemen to producers?
This moral panic about “tenderpreneurs” has become a convenient distraction from deeper failures of policy design. Instead of building an ecosystem that supports black business to grow sustainably, we have created one that penalises success and rewards mediocrity.
Government’s attitude towards entrepreneurship
Namibia’s current approach to entrepreneurship is inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst. Ministers preach about private sector development while policies suffocate enterprise. Agencies that are meant to support small businesses, such as the Development Bank of Namibia and the SME Bank (before its collapse), often operate like commercial banks, not development institutions.
What we have instead are stop-gap measures, ad hoc grants, token incubators, and photo-op partnerships, with no coherent strategy to build black industrialists over the long term. Government remains obsessed with controlling rather than enabling, regulating rather than facilitating.
If we are truly serious about transformation, then the following must happen:
- Reform financial policy to make it easier for black entrepreneurs to access affordable credit without being forced to mortgage their grandparents’ farms.
- Reinstate a genuine Black Industrialist Programme that identifies and nurtures black-owned companies across strategic sectors, manufacturing, logistics, technology, and energy.
- Localise procurement value chains by ensuring that tenders are not just awarded to black firms as fronts but as genuine partners in production and ownership.
- Crack down on capital flight by enforcing transparent reporting standards and penalising corporations that shift profits abroad.
- Revise education and training policy to focus on entrepreneurship and business management as national priorities, not electives.
Economic empowerment cannot be reduced to photo ops, empowerment summits, and policy documents gathering dust in ministry drawers. It must be lived through action, through policy coherence, institutional reform, and moral courage.
It is time to discard the tired narrative that black business is synonymous with greed or incompetence. Black business is not a charity case; it is the future of this economy.
Namibia cannot develop by constantly importing expertise, capital, and goods. The foundation of a sustainable economy is domestic enterprise, and that means empowering black Namibians to be producers, exporters, and innovators.
As a nation, we must stop dancing around these issues. The conversation about black business must move from blame to empowerment, from slogans to strategy. The government cannot continue to demand patriotism from entrepreneurs while punishing their ambition. Proverbially, we can’t have sex and stay virgins at the same time.
Development is not about who wins the next tender; it’s about who builds the next generation of industries. And unless Namibia commits to bold, intentional, and unapologetic support for black enterprise, our so-called “Vision 2030” will remain nothing more than a slogan, written in English, funded by foreigners, and forgotten by history.
