A Govt Not Interested in Jobs

President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is energetically criss-crossing Namibia, promising 500 000 jobs.

She’ll be lucky to see 50 000 jobs created by the year 2030, because it’s business as usual.

If anything, anti-business and anti-innovation seems to be on the increase.

Kelp Blue, a natural fertiliser producer, makes for a poignant case study.

It offers sobering pointers on why Namibia is struggling with job creation.

Not only are the actual jobs it created and lost embraced, but this also points to underlying obstacles stopping the country from improving economically and on other social fronts.

The company came to Namibia five years ago with high hopes of producing a fertiliser from seaweed cultivated at Lüderitz.

In September 2024, it had 104 employees, according to founder and chief executive Daniel Hooft.
It had planned to be at 250 workers by October this year.

Instead, Kelp Blue had to lay off people: down to 48 workers three months ago, with another round of cuts to be announced before year-end, despite making an initial investment of about N$300 million.

And the reasons? The government – through the agriculture ministry – used false ‘requirements’ and deployed bureaucratic obstacles to reject Kelp Blue’s application to register and sell a new Namibian product.

“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 four 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,” Hooft wrote in an article in The Namibian in October.

The company recently overcame a hurdle in the High Court against the ministry’s refusal to register StimBlue+.

The ministry’s loss was as tardily based as its rejection of Kelp Blue’s application for a homegrown fertiliser to boost president Nandi-Ndaitwah’s priority project for increased agricultural activities and production.

The ministry repeatedly ignored court procedures and at one point submitted “a statement devoid of any truth”.

The government now faces huge legal costs, and is on course to be forced to grant the licence.

Sadly, even if the court grants the licence, it’s likely to be an empty victory as Kelp Blue would have to interact with the same ministry for its business to go smoothly.

For Namibia the damage is immense: Jobs have already been lost over the past four years as Kelp Blue struggled to cut through mind-numbing bureaucracy.

Worse yet, a case like this discourages innovation and investment.

Kelp Blue’s outgoing managing director, Fabian Shaanika, told the court the ministry’s reasons were patently false because the company had complied fully.

The ministry’s rejection of StimBlue+ included that “product registration from the country of origin or importer was not attached”, a strange statement for a homegrown product.

An aside: The Namibian would not put it past some officials to make it difficult for foreign investors, because their BEE (black elite enrichment) henchmen are not part of Kelp Blue.

It’s no secret that investors (local and foreign) have experienced bureaucratic frustrations and rejection because they do not bow to ‘perk pressures’ or have the right kind of BEE faces.

Nationally, the number of Namibian employers dropped by two out of three (from 45 000 to 15 000) between 2018 and 2023, most of them small and medium enterprises.

Yet government leaders do not seem to appreciate the urgent need to turn the country into a business-friendly environment.

With real unemployment at more than half the population, the president will have to take drastic action against incompetent and self-serving public officials if she genuinely wants to do things differently.

Merely saying she will not tolerate “business as usual” will not cut it.

The government will never be able to create jobs at the same rate as the private sector.

The private sector cannot create jobs amid obstacles that can only be described as mind-boggling.

The ripple effect is far-reaching. It threatens the very foundations of our economy and the financial stability and well-being of our nation.

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