The green hydrogen precedent
Namibia has already seen what can happen when a strategic sector is driven from the centre before the legal architecture is fully settled.
Green hydrogen has been strongly linked to the Office of the President through the role of the green hydrogen commissioner, who also serves as presidential economic adviser.
The programme’s own public reporting shows that policy and interim regulatory measures have remained under development while implementation, coordination, and institutional partnerships have continued apace.
There may be advantages to such an arrangement: It can create visibility, move decisions faster, and signal national priority.
But it also carries disadvantages that should not be ignored. It can blur the line between political champion, policy coordinator, regulator, and implementing institution. It can make it harder for the public to understand who is legally responsible for which decisions.
And it can leave the parliament asking questions without a clear, settled map of accountability.
That does not mean the green hydrogen model is identical to the proposed petroleum model – it is not. Petroleum carries even greater risks because it involves larger revenues, licensing power, stronger commercial pressures, and more direct exposure to corruption and capture.
But green hydrogen does offer a cautionary lesson: When governance is driven mainly by executive arrangement rather than by a carefully settled legal framework, uncertainty and blurred responsibility tend to grow.
Namibia should be especially careful not to repeat that pattern in petroleum.
The danger of centralising first
The real danger is that Namibia may be trying to centralise first and safeguard later. That is the wrong order.
Before vesting more petroleum power in the Presidency, the country should first be confident about the legal architecture that will hold the sector together.
How will ministerial accountability work in practice? What exactly remains with the ministry, what moves to the Presidency, and what falls to the Upstream Petroleum Unit?
How will the parliament exercise oversight in a meaningful way? How will the public follow decisions that affect national wealth?
And how will the state avoid combining too much political, policy, and operational influence in one place?
These questions are not hostile to development; they are part of responsible development. Serious investors do not benefit from legal uncertainty or institutional ambiguity.
Nor do communities, the parliament, or the state itself. Durable investor confidence comes from predictable rules, credible institutions, and lawful decision-making – not only from speed. The experience of other emerging oil-producing countries reinforces this point: Ghana’s Petroleum Revenue Management Act and Norway’s institutional model demonstrate that establishing clear legal frameworks before production, not after, yields more stable and accountable governance over time.
The country also needs to think about sequence. Namibia still has broader unresolved questions around petroleum governance, including transparency, public participation, environmental oversight, revenue management, and benefit-sharing – areas that international standards such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Natural Resource Governance Institute framework identify as foundational to sound resource governance.
It would be unfortunate if the first major legal move in the production era were not to strengthen those foundations but instead to concentrate more authority at the centre and promise that the rest can be addressed later. That is exactly how countries place the petroleum cart before the constitutional horse.
A better course
A better course is available. The parliament does not have to choose between paralysis and blind haste. It can support petroleum development while still insisting on proper lawmaking.
It can demand a fuller public explanation for why the current arrangement is necessary. It can require a clearer account of the powers to be transferred and the powers to be retained.
It can test whether the proposed structure strengthens or weakens ministerial responsibility. It can ask what lessons have already been learned from Presidency-led coordination in green hydrogen. And it can insist that any reform of this scale be measured against the Constitution – not only against administrative convenience.
Namibia’s petroleum future will outlast the present office-bearers, the present political moment, and the present excitement.
That is why the legal framework must be built for durability, not only for speed.
Institutions matter most when pressure rises.
Checks and balances matter most when the sums involved become very large.
And constitutional discipline matters most when the government is tempted to move faster than the law can safely carry it.
Conclusion
Namibia has every reason to prepare seriously for first oil.
But the country should not rush to entrench a governance model that raises avoidable constitutional and accountability concerns – especially when the Upstream Petroleum Unit already appears to be functioning in practice.
That is not prudent sequencing; it is a warning sign.
The question is not whether petroleum deserves high-level attention; it clearly does.
The question is whether the state should now deepen the concentration of power in the Presidency before the legal and democratic safeguards are fully in place.
In a constitutional democracy, the answer should be no.
Namibia will be better served by strong institutions than by hurried centralisation.
Before its first oil, the country must get the law right.
– This article was made possible by support from the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The contents expressed in this publication are those of the authors.
