Opinions

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) The question few dare to answer What troubles you more, acknowledging your own lack of competence, or admitting that your proximity to power is a personal privilege that, more often than not, comes at the expense of the national interest? This question is not directed at one individual or one institution. It is directed at every society that has allowed personal loyalty to overshadow merit, competence and accountability. It is also a question that demands intellectual honesty. Most people find it easier to defend their position as the human ego…

By Eunice Tjituka, Senior Manager: Global Business and Treasury Operations at Nedbank Namibia For many Namibians, travelling abroad or paying for goods and services internationally can seem complicated. Terms such as 'cross-border payments', 'foreign exchange (FX)' and 'international transaction fees' often sound technical, yet they reflect everyday banking moments – from paying for a flight online to swiping a card while travelling. At Nedbank Namibia, our role is to simplify these conversations and help clients understand what really happens when money moves across borders. In simple terms, a cross-border payment occurs when money is sent or spent in another country.…

Jeronimo Kateya Effective 1 May 2026, China launched a unilateral zero-tariff regime covering  53 African countries having diplomatic relations with China, eliminating customs duties on African export tariff lines. Beyond standard trade liberalisation, the policy reshapes China-Africa supply chains and value distribution, extending China’s domestic poverty alleviation logic under its 15th Five-Year Plan to African economies, including Namibia. Drawing on Hjarvard’s (2013) mediatization theory, this article positions digital communication as a core cross-border trade infrastructure that governs compliance, market discovery and consumer trust. It analyses how African firms’ digital narrative capacity transforms zero-tariff advantages into sustainable industrial development, synthesising African…

There are statistics that merely inform. Then there are statistics that should embarrass a nation. Namibia imports approximately 96% of the fruit consumed within its borders, with almost all of those imports coming from South Africa. For a country blessed with perennial rivers, vast tracts of arable land, abundant sunshine and decades of investment in agricultural education, this is nothing short of a national failure. It is not a natural disaster. It is not bad luck. It is a self-made crisis. Yet, within every crisis lies opportunity. This one could become one of the greatest economic opportunities Namibia has seen…

Sem Billy David After a strategic assessment of the trading environment in Windhoek, I have observed a troubling reality: many of the open markets we know today were not initially created by the City of Windhoek, but were instead identified and developed by vendors themselves before the city later stepped in. This raises an important question about planning, fairness, and responsibility. If street trading is a recognized part of the urban economy, why are there still so few properly built, properly serviced, and legally compliant markets for the people who depend on this trade to survive? The number of available…

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro Johann Wadepul or not, and with or without him, at this juncture the German foreign minister's recent international diplomatic itinerary, which included a visit to Namibia's southern neighbour South Africa but excluded Namibia herself, would have made no difference. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow. It would not have been necessary for Wadepul to come to Namibia – for what? One cannot but ask. Wadepul's visit to South Africa went unnoticed, especially to the descendants there. This could have been different if the descendants in South Africa and their government were and have been an…

Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar) The silent threat to every nation The greatest threat to a nation is not poor leadership alone. It is the silence of capable citizens who surrender their judgment in exchange for comfort, security or proximity to power. Every society eventually faces a defining question that will produce citizens capable of thinking independently, or followers conditioned merely to obey? The answer determines the quality of leadership, the resilience of institutions and, ultimately, the future of the nation itself. The greatest danger is not dictatorship imposed by force. It is something far…

Kae Matundu-Tjiparuro We have come a long way to let it go. Never ever, not now. As much as we have reached the Rubicon, this is not the time to push back and retreat, shift sideways, or incline in the slightest towards entertaining the Joint Declaration (JD) bilateral political razzmatazz of our Namibian government and its German counterpart. In the memory of Dr Freddy Omo Kustaa, and many others, this is the time to push on by any means necessary towards the ultimate victory. There can be no other option than true and fair restorative justice, as now embodied in…

When law meets administration. Carmen Diehl  & Vincent Shimutwikeni On 1 May 2026, Namibia's retirement fund industry entered a new regulatory era with the commencement of the Financial Institutions and Markets Act, 2021 ("FIMA"). The Act represents the most significant reform of the retirement fund regulatory framework in decades, strengthening governance, enhancing member protection and modernising the regulation of non-bank financial institutions. As with any significant legislative reform, however, the true test of the law does not begin when it is published in the Government Gazette. It begins when its provisions must be translated into systems, processes, decisions and, ultimately,…