ALTHOUGH COMMON ELSEWHERE in the world, business partnerships are generally not in vogue in Namibia.
There are few to be found, especially when measured by racial demographics.
Namibia’s emerging entrepreneurs are seemingly loners, who, by choice, prefer being the whole and sole owner of the enterprise they start, operate and manage.
Partnerships in the enterprise sector are usually confined to service providers and professionals, such as engineers, accountants, lawyers, architects, and medical practitioners, among others.
Yet the business name and family ownership structure of older and more established firms reflect that many must have started as partnerships.
Consider the retail group Wecke & Voigts, and Namibia’s largest private firm, diversified group Ohlthaver & List, with interests in beer brewing, hotels, dairy products, supermarkets and fishing.
Other notable examples are Metje & Ziegler, one of Namibia’s largest automotive retailers, Joseph & Snyman, a property management and valuation firm, and Woermann Brock, a supermarket group with outlets countrywide.
So, business partnerships, that concept of pooling resources to start and grow an enterprise, is not alien to Namibia.
Perhaps the tide is turning.
Consider three female entrepreneurs at Rundu, who discovered there is value in forging a partnership by sharing skills and expertise, and pooling resources.
According to the ladies, who started their respective enterprises on a shoestring with minimal capital, forming an alliance has helped them grow their businesses, and to ride the storm resulting from Covid-19.
At their separate stalls at Rundu’s open market they provide tailoring services and make a range of traditional garments, baby carriers, school uniforms, and various other garments.
Although business competitors, the three ladies say they constantly experience the value of working together and helping one another.
When one is away from their business, the other two serve her customers, bank money from products sold, and supervise staff to ensure production is not disrupted.
In other ways too they cooperate, such as helping with production when one secures a large order.
It is difficult, even near impossible, for an entrepreneur to access funding in this tightly controlled and highly regulated collateral-based lending environment.
To borrow money required to fund working capital needs or to grow a business, an entrepreneur must already have money.
The three ladies are in that ginormous group of Namibian entrepreneurs who find it near impossible to provide security, and resultantly have minimal chance of accessing a business loan.
So, the three entrepreneurs pitched for grants to an adjudication panel comprising bankers, public officials and seasoned entrepreneurs from a business resilience programme.
At the German Development Service GIZ’s funded grant programme, the one lady asked for help to buy an industrial sewing machine.
The other one applied for support to buy an overlocker, and the third asked for assistance to purchase an embroidery machine.
Cleverly the three convinced the adjudicators that by granting support to one entrepreneur all three would benefit.
Better still, each of the three entrepreneurs in their respective presentations pointed out to the adjudicators that if all three were helped, then immediately and collectively productivity and productive capacity would skyrocket in scope and magnitude.
Uniquely creative, this is a business partnership of a different kind.
