There is a question that the current foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak should force every Namibian entrepreneur to ask: Are we genuinely ready for the next crisis that will hit our economy?
Not the crisis we can see coming. Not the crisis for which government issues a warning and gives us time to prepare. I mean the crisis that arrives suddenly, disrupts established assumptions and exposes how vulnerable our businesses really are.
We have been here before.
COVID-19 should have been our great national lesson in economic resilience. It demonstrated with brutal clarity how quickly businesses can move from profitable to vulnerable when their operating environment changes overnight.
Companies that had spent years building businesses around physical interaction suddenly had to operate remotely. Restaurants lost customers. Tourism collapsed. Events disappeared. Retailers struggled. Supply chains were disrupted. Employees were sent home. Cash flow became the difference between survival and closure.
Some businesses adapted remarkably well. Others did not survive.
Yet perhaps the most important lesson from COVID-19 was not simply that crises happen. It was that the businesses that survive crises are usually those that have prepared before the crisis arrives.
Today, FMD is giving us another warning.
Namibia has dealt with FMD outbreaks before. Historically, the country has managed to contain outbreaks largely within defined geographical areas while protecting the country’s commercially important FMD-free zone. That distinction matters because Namibia’s beef industry, export markets, farmers, abattoirs, transporters and numerous businesses depend on maintaining that status.
The latest outbreak is therefore more than a veterinary matter.
It is an economic matter.
When animal movement is restricted, the consequences travel far beyond the farm where the disease is detected. They reach transport companies, meat processors, auction facilities, feed suppliers, retailers, restaurants, exporters, financial institutions and employees whose livelihoods depend on these businesses.
And that is precisely why entrepreneurs should be paying attention.
The question is not whether FMD will destroy Namibia’s economy. It is whether our businesses have sufficient resilience to withstand another significant economic shock.
COVID-19 showed us that many businesses were operating without adequate cash reserves. Some were excessively dependent on a single customer, supplier, market or revenue stream. Others had no meaningful digital alternative to their physical business model.
How many of us corrected those weaknesses?
How many entrepreneurs have deliberately diversified their revenue streams since COVID-19?
How many have maintained a meaningful emergency cash reserve?
How many have identified alternative suppliers in case their primary supplier becomes unavailable?
How many know exactly which costs can be reduced within 30 days if revenue suddenly falls by 30 or 40 percent?
How many businesses have a written crisis-management plan?
And perhaps most importantly: how many entrepreneurs have stopped thinking of resilience as something government should provide?
Government has an important responsibility during a crisis. It must provide clear information, appropriate regulation, infrastructure, veterinary protection, financial interventions and an enabling environment. But government cannot build resilience into every private company in Namibia.
That responsibility also belongs to us.
As entrepreneurs, we often celebrate growth. We celebrate turnover, new contracts, new branches, new employees and bigger premises. These are important measures of success.
But perhaps we should also begin celebrating something less glamorous: the ability to survive adversity.
A business that survives a crisis is not necessarily the business with the highest turnover. It may be the business with the strongest balance sheet, the most adaptable people, the most loyal customers and the greatest ability to change direction.
This is particularly important in Namibia because of the structure of our economy. We are a relatively small market and remain heavily exposed to external developments. Commodity prices, drought, international conflicts, global supply chains, tourism cycles, exchange-rate movements, regulatory changes and disease outbreaks can all have consequences far beyond the sectors in which they originate.
A mining disruption can affect a contractor. A drought can affect a retailer. A livestock disease can affect transporters and restaurants. A global recession can affect advertising agencies and media companies.
Everything is connected.
That means entrepreneurial resilience cannot simply mean protecting one’s own company. It requires understanding the ecosystem in which that company operates.
Perhaps COVID-19 should therefore have changed the way Namibian entrepreneurs think about business.
Instead of asking only, “How much can we grow?”, perhaps we should also ask, “How much disruption can we absorb?”
Instead of asking, “What happens if business goes well?”, we should ask, “What happens if our biggest customer disappears?”
Instead of assuming that our current supply chain will always function, we should ask what happens if it doesn’t.
And instead of treating crisis management as something we think about when the crisis arrives, we should make it part of ordinary business planning.
FMD is a livestock disease. But its broader lesson is not confined to agriculture.
It is a reminder that vulnerability can move through an economy much faster than we expect.
We have already had our warning with COVID-19.
We should not need another pandemic, another devastating drought, another financial shock or another disease outbreak to discover that we were unprepared.
The pertinent question for Namibian entrepreneurs is therefore not whether another crisis will come.
It will.
The real question is: When it comes, will we merely hope to survive it, or will we have built businesses capable of surviving it?
