A recent survey revealed a statistic that should alarm every policymaker, educator and truly, even the business leaders in this country: only 19% of our young people, those aged 18 to 35, aspire to start their own businesses. This figure reportedly represents the lowest rate of entrepreneurial ambition recorded across the African continent. Simultaneously, a massive 44% of our youth state a clear preference for jobs within the civil service. This paradox goes beyond just a statistical anomaly. It is actually a confirmation that we have structured our economy and society in a way that actively encourages our brightest minds to prioritise the safety of a pension over the immense potential of creation.
We must be clear about this problem. It is not a deficit of imagination on the part of the youth. It is a rational, calculated response to a structural environment that has made entrepreneurship feel prohibitively dangerous and fundamentally unsupported. We cannot condemn young people for seeking the one reliable shelter found in a government pay cheque when the alternative is financial ruin and acute social stigma. Our system, unintentionally, punishes risk-taking.
The preference for civil service is rooted in a cultural economic heritage that places stability above all else. For generations, the public sector job has symbolised security, guaranteed benefits and a shield against the intense volatility of the open market. This stability is particularly necessary for young Namibians, who often carry the burden of supporting extended families, acting as the sole economic pillar for multiple dependants. For this person, failure in a business venture is not a simple learning experience; failure is a catastrophic reversal that affects everyone relying on them. We have collectively failed to de-risk the economic environment for our aspiring creators.
Structural and policy hurdles aggressively reinforce this risk-averse mindset. The access to capital for a youth-led startup is nearly non-existent. Traditional commercial banks demand collateral that a recent graduate simply cannot provide. Government seed funding programmes, while well intentioned in their mandate, are often mired in crippling bureaucracy, slow processing times, and complex application requirements that require external professional consulting simply to navigate successfully. This regulatory friction acts as a deliberate barrier to entry. Why navigate months of complex administrative applications for an unsecured, small loan when the only guaranteed pay cheque is waiting?
Furthermore, our education system continues to serve the needs of the 20th century, not the 21st. Our schools and universities are effective at producing administrative talent, clerical skill, and graduates ready for large organizational structures. They are less effective at instilling the core capabilities required for business creation: advanced financial modelling, sales strategy, creative problem solving for market gaps, and digital skill integration. When graduates lack the practical literacy to write a convincing business plan or manage cash flow, the perceived risk of starting a venture multiplies exponentially. The entire system prepares them to be dependants, not economic creators.
The cost of this paradox is profound economic stagnation. An economy that relies solely on large-scale state employment and resource extraction cannot effectively innovate or diversify its wealth base. The vast majority of new jobs, future wealth, and systemic resilience in any modern economy come from scalable micro, small, and medium enterprises. By actively discouraging the 19 percent, we are sacrificing our national capacity for independent, self sustained growth. We are outsourcing our national innovation mandate and ensuring the continuation of high unemployment figures.
To reverse this alarming trend, we need immediate, decisive action that prioritises and celebrates creation over compliance.
First, we must aggressively reimagine our Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. TVET must be repositioned as a highly desirable pathway to skilled self-employment, not merely as an alternative for non-academic students. It should focus equally on technical mastery and practical financial literacy and business management. Second, we must fundamentally reform access to finance. This means moving decisively beyond collateral-based lending to character- and concept-based patient capital. Government funds must create guarantee schemes and specialised micro-equity funds that are fast, accessible, and designed for failure and iteration. Failure must be treated as a valuable lesson, not a sentence of lifelong debt. Third, the regulatory environment must be radically simplified for youth led startups. We need streamlined online registration, reduced fees, and a dedicated one stop shop for tax and permit compliance that treats entrepreneurs as national assets, not administrative burdens.
Finally, we must deliberately shift the cultural narrative. We must showcase and publicly celebrate the successful, resilient founders who are creating jobs and solving local problems. These entrepreneurs, not just high-ranking officials, must become the visible, inspiring role models for the next generation. The future of Namibia does not depend on how many young people we can fit into government offices; it depends entirely on how many young people we empower to build their own tables, their own enterprises, and their own future economy. We must give them the tools, the capital, and the cultural licence to take that necessary risk.
