By: Daniel Hooft
On the 23rd and 24th of October, Her Excellency the President will host Namibia’s inaugural Public-Private Forum.
The desired outcome is to formulate and implement policies that accelerate economic activity and job creation. Almost two hundred CEOs and chairpersons will be joined by most of the Cabinet, several executive directors and regulators, and a number of NGOs.
The forum is organised by the Namibian Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) and the Namibian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI).
The core thesis is that there are 3 ways in which a government can create jobs: 1. Directly employ more people as civil servants; 2. Increase infrastructure spending, and 3. Enable the Private Sector. The first two are clearly unaffordable for Namibia, which leaves the private sector as the only viable engine for the ambitious job creation aspirations of this administration (500,000 jobs in the next 5 years).
On the 15th of October, a preparatory day was held at which the two hundred business leaders formed working groups to formulate their key recommendations to the President and her Cabinet. The working groups were arranged in accordance with the administration’s top priorities around job creation: agriculture, sports, youth empowerment, quality education & training, the creative industries, quality health and social welfare, land, housing, and sanitation. Critically important sectors such as energy, mining, manufacturing, SMEs, finance, and digital infrastructure and innovation were included.
The day was introduced by examining the recent World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) ranking from 2025. This is a publicly available report produced by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), one of the world’s leading business schools and research centres. It is a sobering read for Namibia, coming 68th out of 69 countries, just ahead of Venezuela and just behind Nigeria.
It isn’t all bad, though: Namibia scores well on the cost of doing business (e.g. the cost of renting an office), on its tax policy, and on the state of its public finances. The poorest scores were, unsurprisingly, for the limited diversification of the domestic economy, for low levels of technological and scientific infrastructure, and – most relevant to the Public-Private Forum – the state of business legislation and consequently low international investment levels.
As an international investor in Namibia (having deployed over N$300 million into the country to date), and as someone who has lived and worked here for almost 5 years, my experience echoes the report. In my previous life as an oil and gas executive, I lived and worked in the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Jordan, Georgia, Gabon, and Australia. I believe I bring some real-world experience to the discussion of Namibia’s comparative strengths and weaknesses in encouraging the private sector to create large numbers of long-term, meaningful, inspiring, and dignified jobs.
My experience with Kelp Blue, the company I established in Namibia in 2020, in its interactions with government is indicative of Namibia’s strengths and weaknesses in supporting the private sector. Our experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Highlights include working with Nangula Uaandja and her team at the NIPDB, working with the Blue-Green Economic Reform Advisor to President Geingob (prior to the days of Green Hydrogen), and working with the various teams at the Ministry of Fisheries and the Ministry of Environment during our environmental impact assessment and our licence application trajectory and ongoing reporting engagements. Moreover, our experience working with local State stakeholders in Lüderitz such as NamPort and Fluksman Samuehl’s Luderitz Waterfront Development Company, and our current experience with the Namibian High Court add to our extensive experience.
These interactions have all been human, pleasant, positive, patriotic, professional, respectful, of high integrity, and most importantly, they have been efficient and effective.
I am also very optimistic about the Namibian government’s digitisation journey, which, in pockets such as BIPA and NATIS and livestock tracking, can already be seen to be developing. I am looking forward to its full implementation in the coming years, which I believe will generate significant productivity dividends.
Georgia and Estonia provide excellent examples of this; where interactions of the citizens and businesses with the State have become a pleasant, efficient, cost-effective and instantaneous online experience. Acceleration and deepening of the ambition in this level should be encouraged. In terms of the negative, only one significant experience stands out. Unfortunately, the risks outweigh all the positives.
Kelp Blue’s proudly Namibian product, StimBlue+, a fully organic seaweed extract that significantly boosts crop yields and improves soil health, approved for use and distribution in 69 jurisdictions globally, was refused registration by the Ministry of Agriculture in January 2025 after 4 years of highly frustrating and inefficient interaction on the subject.
The stated reasons for refusal were patently false, clarification requests and meetings were summarily refused, and as a result, we took the Ministry to court and are in the final phases of that process, and are confident we will win.
As such, we are still entirely in the dark about why the Ministry hasn’t been forthcoming on our efforts by ensuring we are able to sell our product. Unfortunately, this has caused an estimated N$15-20 million loss in annual revenue over the past 2 years, resulting in three international investors walking away (one of whom was considering an investment of close to 1 billion NAD), and three rounds of retrenchments in the last 14 months.
We had 104 Namibian employees in September 2024. Today, we have 48. In my original business plans, we should have had 250 by now. Instead of enabling job creation, the public sector has been, in this case, the direct cause of job destruction.
We are blue-green, and our business has multiple globally recognised environmental positives. If supported to grow to our full potential, our contribution to the GDP will one day be equal to that of the fishing sector. By then, we would have created thousands of direct and indirect jobs, including in advanced areas such as plant genetics, marine robotics, and factory automation and instrumentation.
On top of this, much of what we do is a world-first, bringing enormous credit and positive PR to Namibia and positioning the country as a world leader. It seems to me that we are meeting all of the President’s criteria and wishlists for this administration.
I would dearly love the Ministry of Agriculture to be our biggest champion instead of our biggest detractor. I would love for the Ministry to champion us by providing permission to sell our inspiring Namibian product, made by inspiring young Namibians, to the Namibian agricultural sector that would prefer our proudly Namibian product to imported alternatives.
To bring this back to the Public-Private Forum, our particular case is the one that I know best, but I also know from my discussions with other business leaders that there are many examples of similar frustrations and blockages – where civil service inaction, or slowness of action, is hampering or destroying the private sector’s ability to create jobs.
I am confident that the current administration will take the steps required to unravel these issues and thereby help the private sector fulfill its potential in building a profitable and dignified future for all Namibians.
Indeed, the common theme from all the working groups at the event on the 15th of October was a desire to see bureaucracy become more effective, more efficient and more actively business-friendly. Key recommendations will presumably centre around cross-sectoral initiatives that reduce government-induced delays, thereby improving business productivity and cross-sectoral means of enhancing the resilience, in turn the survival rate of small enterprises and those run by the youth.
There may be recommendations around alleviating cash flow constraints of small companies. And there will be many more sector-specific recommendations; low-hanging fruit that can rapidly generate economic activity and consequent job creation.
Despite our challenges, I remain highly optimistic about Namibia and the Public-Private Forum.
The Presidency, the Cabinet, and the Namibian public sector can look forward to an engaged, energised private sector that is keen to do its part – all 180 business leaders in the room showed determination and commitment.
A civil service that focuses on efficiency, productivity, and timeliness, and the consequent creation of many high-quality sustainable jobs, is definitely within reach for Namibia.
Daniel Hooft is the Founder and CEO of Kelp Blue, a company that grows giant kelp in the Benguela current and converts it into seaweed extract that boosts crop yields and enhances soil health. He is the chairman of the Luderitz Blue School, a not-for-profit international boarding school with 20% local scholarship pupils, which Daniel and Lucy established in 2022. He also founded the Kelp Forest Foundation, which sponsors UNAM and NUST MSc research students to complete theses on blue carbon or marine biodiversity topics supervised by some of the world’s most renowned academics.
