The government’s public acknowledgement that it had no reliable system to track job creation is hopefully akin to an alcoholic confessing to addiction. It’s not just about tracking jobs. National Planning Commission director general Kaire Mbuende in essence pointed out…

The decision to ban businessman Sakaria Johannes’ Tokai Investment CC for five years after it supplied medical equipment stolen from the same ministry of health that hired him to provide them is shocking in its leniency. The Public Procurement Review…

It is true, as prime minister Elijah Ngurare has stated, that the government has a major problem of “middlemen” and state employees more interested in self-enrichment than improving the living conditions of the voting masses. Ngurare has argued at a…

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.…

An informed guess suggested that voter turnout on Wednesday would be lower than in the last local council and regional authority elections in 2020. Five years ago, voters seemed fired up following the exposure of the Fishrot scandal in 2019…

It is strange that opposition lawmaker Bernadus Swartbooi is taking a page out of the book of Caprivi secessionist Mishake Muyongo, who is now living out his twilight years in exile in Denmark. After a couple of decades of doing…

How administrators got away with the unprecedented incompetence that led to the nationwide chaos of last year’s general elections is unfathomable. Cleaning up the incompetence at the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) should have been the priority of members of…

Two government announcements in the past week have suggested there’s an incomprehensible disregard for research data to inform decision-making. Minister of information and communication technology Emma Theofelus cryptically confirmed, via an unofficial platform, that she has rejected Starlink’s application to…

When schoolchildren dressed up as black kffrs for Halloween, the German private school in Windhoek, which some of them attend, was exclusively singled out for criticism. Conspicuously absent from the public discourse was the role of the children’s parents. By…

The president might be correct in moving the management of oil and gas under her office because the history of the industry in Africa shows “it needs close monitoring”. Yet president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s move this week – dispatching acting industries,…

EK sê kuume, the Road Fund Administration (RFA) wants to double its fuel tax to N$4.46 to build and maintain Namibia’s Rolls-Royce-level road network. Announcing the RFA’s five-year business plan this week, chief executive Ali Iipinge said they need an…

If Natangwe Ithete was fired for his anti-business attitude, there is hope that the government’s distrust and outright dislike of genuine enterprise will die for the sake of improving Namibia’s poor economic performance. But if Ithete was fired for ignoring…