Hon. Rodney Cloete MP-Shadow Minister of International & Trade

The IMF’s 2026 Article IV consultation says Namibia’s growth slowed to 1.7% in 2025, with weak diamond demand, fuel-price risks and global uncertainty weighing on the outlook. It says oil, gas and green hydrogen could diversify the economy, but only with clear policy frameworks, balanced local-content rules and skills alignment.

The World Bank remains blunt: Namibia is still among the most unequal countries in the world, with elevated poverty, high unemployment and climate vulnerability.

So, while rankings and investment conferences look good, the deeper test is unchanged: does growth reach the jobless, or does it stop at the tender committee?

IMF Executive Board Concludes 2026 Article IV Consultation with Namibia IMF Executive Board Concludes 2026 Article IV Consultation with Namibia

Government has been mum on this issue, what is the stance any announcements at

De Beers CEO sees sale of diamond firm in 'weeks not months'

De Beers CEO sees sale of diamond firm in 'weeks not months' A sale of De Beers, Anglo American's diamond unit, has never been closer, its ‌CEO said on Tuesday, adding that a deal could come within weeks.

Government must stop confusing paperwork with progress.

If we continue treat the State like a feeding scheme for elites instead of an engine for national development. We will remain a static society.

You cannot claim to love your country while outsourcing its future to politically connected middlemen and foreign boardrooms.

Every embassy a country runs abroad exists to do five things, and we can spell them out plainly Represent the nation, Protect its people, Negotiate on their behalf, Report home what is actually happening on the ground, and Promote trade and opportunity. That is the whole job. That is the entire reason your tax money pays for missions in Pretoria and everywhere else. Five duties, one purpose to make sure that when a Namibian crosses a border, the Republic crosses it with them.

Here is the part that should anger every taxpayer. Protect is not a favour the government grants when it feels generous. It is the contract. A mission is funded by the taxes of the exact people it is meant to protect, which means answering the phone when a citizen is in danger abroad is not kindness — it is the bare minimum of the job we are already paying for. We were promised five functions. Right now, too often, we are getting a flag and an address and blue light pick up for ministers. 🇳🇦

The Namibian (@TheNamibian) on X

Gave notice for 18 June. Because cabinet has never tabled a comprehensive foreign trade policy report that Article 40(h) of our own Constitution demands of it.

Now watch this, because it’s the oldest story on the continent a small country sitting on something valuable faces the same fork every single time, where it either writes its own trade strategy or wakes up to find it’s been quietly written into someone else’s and we of all people should know how that ends, because the last time the powerful sat down to carve up what was valuable they did it in Berlin, with a map and a pencil, and not one African in the room.

So forcing this question on the floor comes down to one thing whether we intend to author our own future before the oil flows, because that is how a small nation stops being a prize on somebody else’s map and starts being a player at its own table, and history, I promise you, is unforgiving to the ones who only drift.

Okay, so everyone’s celebrating that Namibia found oil. Ten billion barrels, biggest discovery on Earth this decade, Total and Shell and Chevron all fighting to get in. And everyone’s asking the wrong question. The question is not did we find oil? The question is who owned the lottery ticket before the numbers were drawn?

Long before anyone knew there was oil back when these blocks were just empty squares of ocean on a map the government handed out licences. And inside almost every licence, a small slice, 5 or 10 percent, went to a local partner. A private company. Not the nation. Not NAMCOR. A company. And here’s the beautiful part: that slice was carried, which is a fancy word meaning the local partner never pays for anything. Not the ships, not the drilling, not one dollar of the billion dollar wells. They just hold the paper.

Think of it like the village discovering diamonds under the communal grazing land but six months before the discovery, somebody quietly gave his friend a paper saying whatever comes out of this ground, ten percent is yours, and you’ll never pay a cent for the digging. Did the friend dig? No. Did he bring machines? No. He brought a signature.

Now watch what happens next. In September 2021 three months before Total’s drill bit hit Venus, before anyone knew a private company owned by one Namibian businessman signed a deal to sell 49% of those carried slices to a small company on the Canadian stock exchange. Price? About 5.7 million dollars, plus shares, completed March 2022 . And here’s the detail historians will write about the deal could only close once the Namibian government granted yet another new licence to the same group and the government granted it . A private sale in Toronto, waiting on a minister’s pen in Windhoek. The pen moved.

Then the majors drilled. Mopane alone is now booked at 1.38 billion barrels equivalent That free slice the paper the friend got for a signature is now worth a fortune. And because it was sold as shares in companies rather than the licence itself, the money moves in Canada, the approvals may never have crossed a Namibian desk, and the tax question is a giant shrug.

Russia in the 1990s state oil handed to insiders for kopeks before anyone priced it, and a decade later those men were billionaires and Russian pensioners were selling their medals. Nigeria: oil blocks awarded for nothing to connected men, flipped to foreign majors for over a billion dollars while the Niger Delta still has no lights. And we don’t even need to leave home Fishrot was exactly this mechanism. Paper rights to fish nobody had caught yet, given to connected men, monetised through Iceland, and the fishermen of Walvis Bay got retrenchment letters. Same script. They’ve just upgraded from fish to oil, and the ocean is the same one.

The main event is that a bill is moving through Parliament right now to put the power to grant these licences the power to mint the next round of golden tickets into one office, the Presidency, just as the biggest approvals of the decade come due. Whoever holds that pen in 2026 decides who gets rich in 2030.

So when first oil comes and they tell the pensioner in Khorixas to celebrate, she should ask one question the ten percent that was given away when this was just empty ocean who got it, what did they do for it, and where did the money go when they sold it?

Norway asked that question before the oil flowed and built the richest pension fund on Earth. Nigeria asked it twenty years too late. Namibia gets to choose its timeline but the choosing happens now, not in 2030.

QatarEnergy now holds interests in four Namibian offshore licences PEL 39, 56, 91 and 90 covering roughly 34,000 km² . One state company quietly accumulating positions across the basin.

QatarEnergy announces new oil discovery offshore Namibia Tribune News NetworkDohaQatarEnergy announced an oil discovery with encouraging results from the Merlin-1X exploration well in the Petroleum Exploration License 39 (PEL 0039),...