Prime Minister Elijah Ngurare has ordered that long-delayed plans to roll out irrigation at the Neckartal Dam move into implementation within months, warning that visible progress must be made by the second quarter of the year.
“Phase 2 of Neckartal Dam is long overdue. The line minister will ensure that by the second quarter of this year, through a credible PPP process with adjacent landowners, dust must be seen,” Ngurare said.
The directive places renewed pressure on the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform to finally unlock the irrigation component of the project, years after the dam itself was completed.
Government has long indicated that the second phase will be delivered through public-private partnerships, with the ministry confirming as far back as 2021 that it had engaged the Finance Ministry’s PPP Unit to structure the process.
However, progress has remained slow despite the scale of the opportunity. In 2023, the ministry said a further N$2 billion would be required to complete Phase 2.
The project is expected to open up about 5,000 hectares of irrigated land, with multiple development models under consideration.
These include replicating the green scheme approach with large-scale commercial operations supported by medium-sized farms, or subdividing the land into five blocks of 1,000 hectares.
Planning for the irrigation scheme dates back more than a decade. A 2010 feasibility study identified a mix of crops including dates, grapes, grains, horticulture and lucerne, with farm units ranging between 50 and 100 hectares depending on crop type.
The dam itself was completed in 2019 at a cost exceeding N$5.7 billion. With a storage capacity of about 857 million cubic metres, it is Namibia’s largest water reservoir, built to anchor agricultural expansion in the country’s south.
