The neighbour is at the door, the family is ready to learn, but whether Namibia’s kitchen becomes a place where generational wealth is baked depends almost entirely on the homeowner.
In this series, we’ve been using a simple analogy: A neighbour walks into your kitchen to bake a cake. Local content is the set of rules that determines whether your family participates, supplying the flour, running the oven, learning the recipe, or simply watches.
In Part 2, we asked whether Namibian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are ready to show up.
In Part 3, we asked what the neighbour, the international oil company, actually needs before it commits. Today, we ask about the one person who shapes everything else: the homeowner – the government.
Let me start with honesty about what is already in place: The National Upstream Petroleum Local Content Policy, finalised in March 2025, is a genuine landmark.
The Petrofund has been quietly building enterprise capacity in the petroleum sector for years.
The National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia maintains a vendor registration platform that gives local businesses a formal entry point, and Namibia’s record of political stability remains one of our strongest assets on the continent.
This kitchen already has solid walls, functioning plumbing, and ingredients in the pantry. The question now is how we will be finishing it.
LESSONS FROM BRAZIL, NORWAY
Brazil’s experience offers the most instructive lesson I know.
When its massive offshore oil reserves were discovered in the 2000s, the government mandated aggressive local content percentages – in some categories as high as 65% to 70% of total contract value.
For a period it worked: Shipyards were built, engineering firms grew, and genuine industrial development took root.
But the targets had been set without an honest assessment of what Brazilian industry could actually deliver at pace.
Costs rose, projects slowed, and the framework buckled under its own ambition. Brazil’s hard-won lesson, and ours to apply, is this: The goal is not to force a percentage.
It is to build a supplier base so capable and competitive that the percentage follows naturally. Norway understood this from the beginning, investing deliberately in domestic engineering and manufacturing over decades until its offshore supply chain became a global export.
We do not have decades. But we do have a window, and it is open right now.
So what should government do with it?
Four actions stand above the rest: First, gazette and enforce the Local Content Policy. The policy exists, but until it is formally gazetted, operators face no binding obligation to it.
Gazetting transforms intent into law and sends an unambiguous signal to every international oil company, every small and medium enterprise, and every investor watching Namibia that the rules of this kitchen are now official.
The time to act is before TotalEnergies’ final investment decision, expected before the end of 2026, not after.
Second, establish a dedicated local content monitoring body. Ghana and Guyana both created institutions with the authority to verify suppliers, track operator compliance, and publish findings.
Without something similar, even the best-designed policy risks becoming a reporting exercise rather than a development tool.
Third, create a one-stop permitting desk with published timelines. A drilling rig costs upwards of US$500 000 (about N$8.2 million) per day to operate.
Permitting delays are not administrative inconveniences, they are direct financial losses that redirect capital to Guyana, Brazil, or Nigeria. This is fixable within existing institutions if government makes it a priority.
Fourth, expand the Petrofund’s mandate and budget to co-fund SME journeys toward International Organisation for Standardisation 9001 certification, bridge working capital gaps for businesses waiting on payment cycles, and run procurement readiness training aligned to what Orange Basin operators are specifically looking for.
An adequately resourced Petrofund becomes the institutional engine of SME readiness that no private body can replicate.
Getting this right matters far beyond oil. Every investor watching Namibia – in green hydrogen, agriculture, manufacturing, tourism – is reading how we handle this moment.
Local content done well is not a sector-specific exercise. It is a statement about the kind of economy we are building.
When the cake is finally baked in Namibia’s kitchen, and it will be baked, the question every Namibian will ask is a simple one: Did our family eat first?
Or did we watch from the window again?
That answer is being written right now in the decisions government makes in the months before the financial investment decision.
I am genuinely hopeful we will get it right.
– Mutindi Jacobs is an oil and gas lawyer. Through her ‘Energy Explainer’ series, she aims to simplify Namibia’s oil and gas sector so anyone can understand, engage, and benefit from it. Follow her newsletter on LinkedIn.
