Is Namibia’s financial system economically inclusive enough — or are we simply giving everyone an account without giving everyone a chance to build wealth?
There is an uncomfortable conversation taking place quietly across Namibia.
It is not necessarily being discussed in the polished boardrooms of the country’s commercial banks. It is happening among entrepreneurs, young professionals, small-business owners and aspiring investors.
The question is increasingly being framed in racial terms:
Does your skin colour affect your chances of getting bank funding in Namibia?
That is a dangerous question.
But pretending that nobody is asking it would be even more dangerous.
No serious person should suggest that every loan application rejected by a Namibian bank is evidence of racism. Banks have legitimate responsibilities to depositors, shareholders, regulators and the broader financial system. Lending money is a risk business, and banks cannot simply hand out millions of dollars because an applicant has a good idea.
But neither can the banking industry dismiss the growing perception among black Namibians that the financial system is easier to enter than it is to benefit from.
And that distinction matters.
Because having a bank account is not the same as having access to capital.
A country that is banked, but not necessarily financed
Namibia is not a country without banking infrastructure.
The latest financial inclusion data paints a relatively positive picture of formal financial access. Around 68% of Namibian adults are banked, while another portion uses other formal financial services. Yet a significant minority remains financially excluded.
On paper, therefore, Namibia may look reasonably well banked.
But ask a young Namibian entrepreneur whether having a bank account means having access to finance and the answer is likely to be very different.
A bank account allows you to receive money.
It does not necessarily allow you to raise capital.
This is the critical distinction that needs to enter Namibia’s financial debate.
Recent enterprise-survey data shows that roughly two-thirds of Namibian firms regard access to finance as an obstacle, while only about 36% report having a loan or line of credit from a financial institution.
For entrepreneurs, particularly those starting from scratch, the greatest obstacle is often collateral.
And here the country’s history becomes impossible to ignore.
The collateral trap
Imagine two entrepreneurs.
Both have identical business plans. Both are equally competent. Both require N$2 million to establish their businesses.
One has parents who own a house, commercial property and other assets.
The other comes from a family that owns virtually nothing.
The bank does not necessarily discriminate against the second entrepreneur.
It asks both for collateral.
But the first can provide it.
The second cannot.
This is where Namibia’s colonial and apartheid-era history continues to influence the present without anyone necessarily having to utter a racial slur.
Wealth accumulated over generations does not disappear when political systems change.
Land ownership, property, businesses, savings, investments and networks are passed from parents to children.
Black Namibians entered independence with an enormous historical wealth deficit.
So when a financial system relies heavily on collateral, the consequences can be unequal even when the rules themselves are ostensibly race-neutral.
The bank sees an asset.
The entrepreneur sees history.
And increasingly, the entrepreneur concludes: the bank doesn’t want people like me.
The cash-loan paradox
Perhaps nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in Namibia’s microlending industry.
Namibians who struggle to access substantial productive capital from banks appear to have considerably easier access to small amounts of expensive consumer credit.
By the end of 2024, Namibia’s microlending industry had an outstanding loan book of approximately N$8.1 billion.
By the third quarter of 2025, it remained around N$7.8 billion, with approximately N$1.4 billion in new borrowing during that quarter alone.
This is a remarkable amount of money flowing through an economy supposedly starved of capital.
But what is the money being used for?
The latest financial inclusion data shows that 49% of Namibian adults borrowed money or goods in 2025, compared with 42.1% in 2017.
And the reasons for borrowing should concern policymakers.
Approximately 51.3% of working Namibians who borrowed money did so to buy food.
About 22.1% borrowed for education and 16.4% for transport.
Only 2.3% borrowed to start a business.
Think about that for a moment.
Namibians can borrow billions.
But very little of that borrowing is being converted into productive enterprises.
We have built a financial system that is relatively effective at helping people survive until payday, but considerably less effective at helping them escape the cycle that makes payday borrowing necessary.
That is not simply a banking problem.
It is an economic-development problem.
Why black Namibians are suspicious
The perception of exclusion also has a historical foundation.
For decades, formal economic institutions operated within a system that restricted black Namibians’ access to land, capital, education, markets and commercial opportunity.
Independence abolished the legal architecture of racial exclusion.
But it could not abolish its economic consequences overnight.
A black Namibian entrepreneur today may legally have exactly the same rights as any other citizen.
But legal equality does not automatically produce economic equality.
That is why a rejection letter from a bank can sometimes be interpreted differently depending on who receives it.
To a wealthy established businessperson, it may simply mean the numbers do not work.
To a first-generation black entrepreneur, it can reinforce a much older suspicion:
“This system was never built for me.”
That perception becomes particularly damaging when entrepreneurs stop approaching banks altogether because they believe the answer will be no.
The bank says: Black entrepreneurs aren’t applying.
The entrepreneur says: Banks don’t lend to people like us.
And both sides can end up reinforcing the problem.
The billion-rand elephant in the room
Now comes the most difficult part of this conversation.
Namibian banks are profitable.
Very profitable.
The country’s banking sector recorded approximately N$4.4 billion in net income after tax in 2024, with return on equity reaching about 20.3%.
Total banking-sector income was approximately N$14.5 billion, with net interest income accounting for about N$8.7 billion.
These numbers should not automatically be condemned.
Banks are businesses.
They employ people. They pay taxes. They provide payment infrastructure. They safeguard deposits. They finance households and businesses. They carry enormous regulatory and operational costs.
A profitable banking system is healthier than a bankrupt one.
But profitability becomes a double-edged sword when it is juxtaposed against the economic reality outside the banking sector.
When banks announce billions in profits while young entrepreneurs struggle to raise N$500,000, SMEs cannot satisfy collateral requirements and workers borrow money to buy food, success can begin to look like exploitation.
That perception may not be fair.
But it is real.
And banks should care about it.
Profit is not the problem. The question is what profit enables
The answer is not to make banks less profitable.
The answer is to ask what that profitability can help finance.
Banks sit at the centre of the country’s economic bloodstream.
They know where money is moving.
They know which sectors are growing.
They know which businesses are failing.
They know which entrepreneurs are borrowing.
They know which customers are building assets.
In other words, banks possess an extraordinary amount of economic intelligence.
That gives them an opportunity, and arguably a responsibility, to become active partners in Namibia’s economic transformation.
South Africa provides an interesting example.
Its banking sector has increasingly embraced a developmental approach through the Financial Sector Code, which links financial-sector participation to broader economic transformation.
This includes enterprise development, empowerment financing, access to financial services, affordable housing, agriculture, infrastructure, skills development and support for black-owned businesses.
The philosophy is worth examining.
A bank does not have to choose between making money and contributing to development.
It can do both.
What Namibia could do
Namibia could develop its own serious Economic Transformation Financing Framework involving commercial banks, government, development-finance institutions and the private sector.
It should not be about handing out politically connected loans.
It should not be about abandoning credit discipline.
And it certainly should not be about giving entrepreneurs money they cannot repay.
It should be about building bankable businesses.
Imagine dedicated financing windows for black-owned SMEs, young entrepreneurs, women-owned businesses, agriculture, manufacturing, agro-processing, tourism, technology, creative industries, artisans and affordable housing.
Imagine credit-guarantee mechanisms that reduce the collateral barrier for viable businesses.
Imagine blended finance where commercial capital is combined with development funding.
Imagine banks providing business-plan development, accounting assistance, governance training and financial-management support before an entrepreneur receives a larger loan.
Imagine a young entrepreneur receiving N$200,000, building a track record, then qualifying for N$500,000, followed by N$1 million and eventually N$5 million.
That is how you build entrepreneurs.
Not by giving them money.
By building their capacity to handle money.
But entrepreneurs must also look in the mirror
This debate cannot become an excuse for black businesses to demand financing simply because they are black.
Race must never replace competence.
A bad business remains a bad business regardless of the colour of its owner.
Entrepreneurs have responsibilities too.
They must keep proper accounts.
Pay taxes.
Understand cash flow.
Maintain governance.
Build credible business plans.
Separate personal and business finances.
Develop proper management systems.
And demonstrate that they can repay what they borrow.
The banking industry cannot be expected to subsidise incompetence.
But banks should perhaps ask themselves whether they are doing enough to create competent borrowers.
There is a profound difference between saying, “Bring us a bankable business,” and saying, “We will help you become bankable.”
The second is partnership.
From banks in Namibia to Namibian banks
This may ultimately be the heart of the matter.
Namibia does not need banks that merely operate profitably in Namibia.
It needs banks that see themselves as part of the country’s economic architecture.
Banks should not become government departments.
Nor should they become political instruments.
They should remain commercially disciplined institutions.
But commercial discipline and national development are not mutually exclusive.
The question Namibia should be asking is whether enough of the country’s financial capital is being recycled into productive investment.
Because capital creates businesses.
Businesses create jobs.
Jobs create incomes.
Incomes create savings.
Savings create assets.
Assets create collateral.
Collateral creates access to more capital.
That is how wealth compounds.
If the banking system remains largely accessible only after wealth has already been accumulated, it risks reinforcing the very inequalities that Namibia is trying to overcome.
The real question
Perhaps Namibia should stop asking whether banks are racist every time a loan application is rejected.
That question is too crude.
The better question is:
Does Namibia’s financial system, despite being formally race-neutral, reproduce some of the economic inequalities inherited from the past?
If the answer is even partly yes, then we need to do something about it.
Not because banks should be punished for making money.
Not because entrepreneurs should receive money they cannot repay.
But because banking is simply too important to Namibia’s future to be treated as another commercial sector operating in isolation from the country’s developmental ambitions.
The banks don’t have to stop making money.
They need to make money while helping Namibia make money.
They need to finance production, not merely consumption.
They need to help create entrepreneurs, not simply service existing ones.
They need to help turn young Namibians from consumers into producers, employees into employers and borrowers into asset owners.
And perhaps most importantly, they need to demonstrate that the colour of an entrepreneur’s skin does not determine the size of the economic opportunity available to them.
Because financial inclusion should mean more than giving every Namibian a bank card.
It should mean giving every capable Namibian a credible pathway to capital, enterprise and wealth creation.
That is when a bank stops being merely a bank.
It becomes a partner in nation-building.
