Namibia has never been short of ambition. Since independence in 1990 the country has drafted five National Development Plans and wrapped them all in the grand banner of Vision 2030.
The result is not inspiring reading. Unemployment has climbed to over a third of the workforce, youth joblessness hovers around 50 per cent, and the structural weaknesses in the economy remain stubborn.
Now arrives NDP 6, a six year plan with a price tag of N$505 billion and a promise to do what its predecessors did not: turn words into results.
The good is easy to spot. The plan is built around hard realities that have been neglected for too long. Expanding large scale farming from 11,200 hectares to 130,000 hectares could, if done properly, lift food security and reduce dependence on imports that currently supply 89 per cent of maize and 98 per cent of wheat.
Lifting the manufacturing sector from a decade of stagnation to create 80,000 jobs by 2030, while increasing its share of GDP from 10.6 per cent to 18 per cent, would be transformative. Targets to double crop value chains and grow livestock GDP share to 4 per cent each could inject life into a rural economy that supports 70 per cent of the population.
NDP 6 also finally puts ministers on the hook with performance contracts and pledges to align every programme with measurable outcomes. That is more than talk; it is an overdue attempt to force discipline into a public service that has been allowed to coast through failure after failure. Plans for special economic zones, industrial parks, and technology hubs are not just vanity projects—they are the kind of infrastructure that can anchor investment, provided they are actually built and run.
The bad is harder to excuse. These are not fresh problems. Every one of them was identified in earlier plans. NDP 1 spoke of tackling inequality; NDP 2 boasted GDP growth while jobs evaporated; NDP 3 tied itself to Vision 2030 and drowned in a swamp of unfunded targets; NDP 4 narrowed its scope but left unemployment untouched; NDP 5 promised transformation and delivered recession, mounting debt and a housing backlog so vast it became an embarrassment. Each time the numbers didn’t lie, shifting blame to droughts, markets and global shocks rather than admitting that execution had failed.
From where I stand, it is also bad policy to chase every target at once. NDP 6 lists 47 focus areas, 80 programmes, and 243 sub programmes. That is a lot to focus on. Even the top 25 priorities get N$150 million each, an amount that sounds large but is spread thinly when it is meant to transform entire sectors.
And then comes the overpromises. Promising 75 per cent employment in six years is unrealistic when the economy has been shedding investment and manufacturing has been shrinking for most of the last decade. Talking up nuclear energy while half the rural population still uses pit latrines borders on dark comedy. Reclaiming a number one press freedom ranking, noble as it sounds, will not build a single school, factory or silo. And planning to double the contribution of agriculture while basic inputs such as seed and fertiliser are produced locally at 0 per cent is wishful thinking.
Namibia does not lack vision. It lacks delivery. If NDP 6 succeeds, if hectares are actually planted, factories actually hire, and wages actually rise, then this government will have redeemed decades of failure. If not, then Vision 2030 will be remembered not as a milestone but as a mirage —a generation of glossy documents masking a deeper truth: that this country became expert at planning, yet hopeless at execution.
*Briefly is a weekly column that’s 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.
