Namibia is not in decline. It is stuck. Ranked 22nd in Rand Merchant Bank’s Where to Invest in Africa 2025/26, the country falls squarely into the category the report calls “Stuck in Neutral”—economies that invest too little, export too little, and depend too heavily on imports to finance their consumption.
It shares this quadrant with Malawi, Madagascar, Uganda, Senegal, Zambia, Benin, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe—states that, in RMB’s words, “need exports to build productivity, and productivity to generate exports.” None has yet managed both.
The irony is that Namibia is not short on opportunity. RMB estimates its untapped export potential at around US$3.5 billion, roughly 7 % of GDP.
That should be enough to shake off inertia. But the country’s export engine remains jammed by familiar constraints: ageing railways, under-performing ports, slow customs clearance and regulation designed more to control than to enable.
The report notes that such non-tariff barriers do more to throttle African trade than tariffs ever did. Namibia’s trading future, it argues, lies mainly outside the US market, in diversified regional and non-Western corridors that can cushion shocks.
The deeper problem is structural. Namibia invests too little in productive capacity. Gross capital formation lags well below the levels of faster-growing peers, while the current-account deficit has become a chronic condition.
The economy imports more than it exports and compensates through borrowing rather than production. RMB’s growth-structure model places Namibia in the lower-left corner of its matrix: low investment, negative external balance, weak momentum.
There is no shortage of examples for how to move up. The report cites Singapore, Mauritius, Estonia, and Botswana—economies that broke the cycle with institutional discipline, education, and coherent industrial policy.
Namibia has yet to demonstrate that ambition. The government’s offshore oil discoveries are treated as a lifeline, but they are years from realisation. The promise of 8 % growth is a fantasy; the IMF’s 3 % forecast is reality.
Hydrocarbons may one day lift revenue, but they will not fix the structural flaws that keep the country stagnant.
The global environment is turning less forgiving. Development aid is contracting, foreign investment is flowing to economies that act rather than wait, and Namibia’s bureaucratic calm is starting to look less like prudence and more like paralysis. Stability alone is no longer a virtue when it becomes an excuse for inaction.
The way forward is mundane but clear. Focus on logistics, streamline ports, digitise trade documentation, support exporters with credit and market intelligence. Use the export potential as a target for policy, not as a talking point. Namibia does not need a miracle—just movement.
“Stuck in Neutral” is a warning, not a sentence. The country has the means to accelerate; what it lacks is urgency. If policymakers continue to confuse steadiness with strength, Namibia will remain what it is today—a capable nation idling in place while others overtake it.
* Briefly is a weekly column that is opinionated and analytical. It sifts through the noise to make sense of the numbers, trends and headlines shaping business and the economy with insight, wit and just enough scepticism to keep things interesting. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE NOT OUR OWN, we simply relay them as part of the conversation.
