By Rosemary Tjombonde-Kakuuai
A persistent challenge across many Namibian Stateowned Enterprises (SOEs) is the disconnect between their strategic plans and the projects they ultimately procure and implement.
This misalignment often manifests as a single, visible, and costly symptom: underutilisation of capital budgets. While SOEs publicly commit to national development priorities, their procurement decisions often tell a different story of fragmented planning, reactive spending, and stalled execution.
This challenge sits in stark contrast to the aspirations of Namibia’s Sixth National Development Plan (NDP6), which emphasises integrated planning, strong implementation mechanisms, and rigorous monitoring and evaluation to ensure national outcomes are achieved.
NDP6 explicitly calls for aligned institutional planning systems and a coordinated, government-wide approach to project execution. It also sets ambitious economic and infrastructure development targets that depend heavily on SOEs functioning as effective implementing agencies.
Many SOEs prepare annual procurement plans as a compliance exercise disconnected from the organisation’s strategic priorities. Projects are frequently added on an ad hoc basis, influenced by operational pressures rather than long-term impact.
As a result, capital- intensive projects that should advance national priorities, such as youth empowerment, economic infrastructure, human development, digitalisation, water security, logistics, and effective governance, receive insufficient traction.
The disconnect leads to delays, cancelled tenders, and unspent budgets. While the national budget acknowledges Namibia’s constrained fiscal space and the need for efficient, impact- driven spending, persistent underexecution undermines progress.
The 2026/2027 budget framework reinforces the need for strategic reallocation and efficiency, particularly within development expenditure, and instruction that applies directly to SOEs as custodians of significant capital programmes.
Let us consider the infrastructure-heavy sector, such as energy, transport, water, and logistics, which are all priority development areas under NDP6. The plan highlights the urgency of strengthening energy infrastructure, digital systems, and transport logistics to enable economic competitiveness.
Yet, several SOEs operating in these sectors have faced delays in capital project rollout over recent years, often due to poor procurement planning, mismatches between approved projects and actual organisational capacity, or late initiation of procurement cycles. These delays mean that funds allocated for strategic infrastructure either roll over or are reallocated, ultimately slowing national development momentum.
One may ask, why does strategic procurement matter? Strategic procurement is not about purchasing; it is about value creation. When embedded into strategy execution, it ensures that:
• Projects selected for procurement directly advance strategic outcomes.
• Capital budgets are committed early and executed efficiently.
• Organisational resources align with national priorities such as NDP6’s pillars of economic growth, resilience, and infrastructure development.
• Monitoring and evaluation frameworks highlighted as historically weak in prior NDPs are strengthened through clearer procurement-linked milestones.
If SOEs are to fulfil their developmental mandate, they must rethink procurement as a strategic lever rather than an administrative burden. Executives and boards should insist on procurement plans that mirror strategic intentions, timelines, and national development obligations. Only then will capital budgets translate into real progress and Namibia realise the bold aspirations laid out in NDP6.
