Namibia’s water debate has taken a predictable turn.
A desalination project worth about N$3 billion has triggered political outrage because a foreign company will hold a 70% stake while the state, through NamWater, holds 30%. Critics see the numbers and conclude that the country is surrendering control of a strategic national resource.
The argument sounds powerful. Water is essential to life and economic activity. It sits alongside land, minerals and energy as a resource that carries deep national significance. Any arrangement that appears to place majority ownership in foreign hands will inevitably raise concerns about sovereignty, pricing and long-term control.
But outrage often simplifies what is, in reality, a far more complicated set of facts.
Namibia’s coastal desalination story did not begin with this project. For more than a decade the country’s main desalination facility in the Erongo region has been owned by French state-owned company Orano, formerly Areva. The company has repeatedly tried to sell the plant to the Namibian government, but those efforts have never resulted in a deal. Namibia therefore continued relying on infrastructure built and owned by a foreign company.
That reality rarely generated the same level of political alarm now directed at the new project.
The second fact often overlooked is how this project originated. It was not conceived as a government plan to privatise water infrastructure. It emerged from a private investor trying to solve a business problem.
Swakop Uranium, which operates the Husab Mine and is a subsidiary of China General Nuclear Power Group, has struggled with water shortages in the Erongo region.
Supply interruptions have forced the mine to halt production in the past. For a large uranium operation, losing weeks of output is not sustainable.
The company therefore explored building its own desalination plant to secure water for its operations.
At that point government intervened. Instead of allowing a private mining company to independently construct and operate a desalination facility, the state directed Swakop Uranium to work with NamWater. The intention was to ensure public sector involvement in infrastructure that would ultimately serve the wider region.
The resulting joint venture reflects that compromise. Swakop Uranium provides the majority of the capital and technical capacity required to build the plant, while NamWater participates as a shareholder and integrates the facility into the national water supply system.
In practical terms, the plant will produce around 20 million cubic metres of water annually and will be connected to NamWater’s existing network, supplying industrial users, municipalities and households along the coast. NamWater will remain the sole distributor of water to end users.
That distinction matters. Ownership of infrastructure does not automatically translate into control of the resource itself. The water still flows through Namibia’s national distribution system under NamWater’s authority.
None of this means the concerns raised by critics are baseless. Desalination is expensive technology. Energy costs, operating expenses, debt financing and investor returns all influence the price of water. If governance structures are weak, tariffs could rise over time.
But the debate also ignores Namibia’s fiscal reality.
Building the facility independently would have required NamWater to mobilise between N$2.5 billion and N$3 billion on its own balance sheet. That capital would have had to come from borrowing or public funding. In an economy already facing competing infrastructure demands, that financing challenge is not trivial.
Large infrastructure projects increasingly depend on partnerships between governments and private capital. Water infrastructure is unlikely to be an exception.
The real question is not whether such partnerships should exist. The question is whether they are structured well enough to protect the national interest.
Namibia’s water security problem is real and growing. Mines, towns and industries along the coast already operate within tight supply limits. Without additional desalination capacity, those constraints will only intensify.
Political rhetoric may dominate the headlines, but desalination plants are not built with slogans. They are built with financing, engineering and long-term planning.
The debate should therefore move beyond ownership percentages. The focus should be on governance, pricing safeguards and public oversight.
Water security requires infrastructure. Infrastructure requires capital. The task now is to ensure that both serve Namibia’s long-term interests.
* 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.
