As a Namibian entrepreneur, I have increasingly found myself asking a deceptively simple question: How committed are Namibian workers to the economies of the towns and cities in which they live?
It is a question worth asking because beneath Namibia’s statistics on employment, urbanisation, housing and consumer spending lies another economy that receives remarkably little attention — the “back home” economy.
I was reminded of this recently during an interesting conversation with a friend. We were discussing Namibia’s urban economy when he pointed out something that, at first, sounded obvious but became more profound the longer I thought about it.
Every month, thousands of Namibians working in Windhoek and other urban centres send money to their families and relatives in the villages and traditional communities from which they come.
This is not merely family support. It is an economic system.
Money earned in the city is routinely transferred to rural areas to pay for food, school fees, building materials, medical expenses, funerals, household needs and, increasingly, the construction of substantial homes.
And therein lies an interesting contradiction about Namibia’s development.
We talk constantly about urbanisation. We talk about people moving to Windhoek, Walvis Bay, Oshakati, Rundu and other towns in search of employment and opportunity. We build shopping centres, offices, residential developments and industrial parks on the assumption that urbanisation means people are permanently transferring their economic lives to cities.
But are they?
Perhaps we have misunderstood the Namibian urbanisation story.
For many Namibians, moving to the city does not necessarily mean leaving home. It means going to work.
Home remains somewhere else.
This phenomenon has deep historical roots. Our parents and grandparents were migrant workers. Men and women left rural communities to work on commercial farms, in mines, factories and other urban industries. They earned their wages away from home and sent part of that income back to their families.
The geography has changed, but perhaps the economic psychology has not changed as much as we think.
The migrant worker may now be a banker, teacher, nurse, civil servant, engineer, entrepreneur or corporate executive. Instead of living in a mining compound, he or she may occupy a townhouse in Windhoek.
But the financial relationship with “home” can remain remarkably similar.
The city provides the salary.
Home provides the security.
This becomes particularly interesting when we look at housing.
A young professional may find that purchasing a house in Windhoek is simply beyond reach. Property prices, interest rates, deposits and the general cost of urban living make home ownership an increasingly difficult proposition.
But in the rural area from which that person originates, access to traditional land may be considerably easier.
So what does he or she do?
Build.
And not necessarily a small house.
Increasingly, one sees large, impressive houses being constructed in rural communities — sometimes far larger than the houses their owners could realistically afford in the cities where they work.
This is not necessarily irrational.
The calculation is different.
Why spend decades paying a mortgage for a modest property in an expensive city when one can build a substantial family home on traditional land at a fraction of the cost?
The house becomes an investment, a retirement plan, a family asset and, perhaps most importantly, a declaration of belonging.
It says: I may work in Windhoek, but I am from here.
Then comes retirement.
This is perhaps where the contradiction becomes most obvious.
After spending decades contributing to the urban economy, many Namibians eventually sell their properties in the towns and cities and return to their traditional homes.
They take their pension savings with them.
The capital accumulated in the urban economy is effectively repatriated to the rural economy.
The retiree suddenly becomes a consumer somewhere else. Groceries are purchased there. Houses are renovated there. Small businesses are supported there. Relatives are assisted there. Funerals, weddings and community activities are funded there.
In economic terms, money earned and accumulated in the city can ultimately migrate back home.
So perhaps we should stop thinking about this simply as a social or cultural phenomenon.
It is an economic phenomenon.
The question is what it means for Namibia.
If a significant proportion of urban workers regard the city primarily as a place of employment rather than a permanent economic home, then urban planners, property developers, retailers, financial institutions and policymakers need to understand that behaviour.
The Namibian economy may effectively operate across two parallel spaces: an urban earning economy and a rural belonging economy.
The urban economy pays the salaries.
The rural economy receives a significant portion of the disposable income.
That has consequences.
It helps explain why some rural communities can sustain substantial construction activity despite limited formal employment. It helps explain why remittances remain important. It also raises questions about whether our cities are successfully converting economic activity into long-term wealth creation for the people who live and work in them.
There is another uncomfortable question for entrepreneurs.
Who is actually our customer?
If a worker earns N$30,000 in Windhoek but sends N$10,000 home every month, his or her consumption patterns cannot be understood simply by looking at the person’s salary or urban residence.
The economic footprint of that individual extends far beyond Windhoek.
A financial institution that understands this could design products around the “two-home” reality. A telecommunications company could facilitate cheaper and easier rural-urban financial transfers. Property developers could consider housing products for people who work in cities but intend to retire elsewhere. Retailers could create services that allow urban workers to purchase goods or building materials for relatives in rural areas.
There is a business opportunity hidden inside this social behaviour.
But there is also a national development question.
We need to ask whether Namibia’s urban centres are becoming places where people live and build wealth, or simply places where people work and earn money before sending it elsewhere.
If the latter is true, then our housing policies, urban development strategies and economic planning need to take a fundamentally different view of urbanisation.
This does not mean that sending money home is bad.
Quite the opposite.
Family solidarity has always been one of the strengths of African societies. The problem arises when we fail to understand its scale and economic consequences.
Perhaps the real issue is that Namibia has never completely transitioned from the migrant-worker economy.
We have modernised the worker, but not necessarily the underlying economic relationship.
The miner has become the professional.
The compound has become the apartment.
The monthly remittance remains.
And “going home” remains the ultimate retirement plan.
There is something deeply human about this.
For generations, Namibians have gone out into the world to earn a living while maintaining an emotional and financial connection to where they came from. The city may offer opportunity, but home offers identity, family, land and belonging.
The challenge for Namibia is not to destroy this relationship.
It is to understand it — and perhaps turn it into an economic advantage.
Imagine if the money currently flowing “back home” was increasingly channelled into productive rural enterprises, agricultural value chains, tourism, renewable energy, manufacturing, digital businesses and community-owned infrastructure.
Imagine if retirement did not mean withdrawing capital from the urban economy, but transferring skills and investment into rural economies.
Imagine if the “back home” economy became a deliberate component of Namibia’s national economic strategy rather than something policymakers barely acknowledge.
Perhaps then the journey between town and village would no longer be viewed simply as migration.
It could become economic circulation.
And that may be the more accurate story of Namibia.
We are not necessarily a nation moving from rural areas to cities.
We may be a nation living economically in two places at once.
We work in the city.
We build at home.
We earn in Windhoek.
We invest in the village.
And eventually, many of us may sell the house in town, collect our pension and go back to where it all began.
The question for entrepreneurs and policymakers alike is therefore not simply where Namibians live.
It is: Where does Namibian money live?
Because the answer may tell us far more about the real structure of our economy than the address on our identity documents ever could.
