Why Red Meat Belongs at the Centre of the Investment Bill

The Public Debate surrounding Namibia’s proposed investment promotion and facilitation bill has understandably focused on foreign investors, access, regulation and investor confidence.

However, this framing risks overlooking a more fundamental issue: which domestic sectors should anchor Namibia’s investment strategy under the new law.

If the bill is to achieve its stated objectives, the red meat industry must be one of them.

The bill is unambiguous about its purpose.

Section 4 makes clear that investment policy is no longer neutral or purely facilitative; it is explicitly developmental.

Investment must contribute to national development objectives, employment creation, value addition to natural resources, small and medium enterprise (SME) participation and sustainable development.

This marks a decisive shift away from investment as an end, towards investment as a means to structural transformation.

Measured against these criteria, few sectors qualify as clearly, or as comprehensively, as Namibia’s red meat value chain.

Yet for decades, red meat has been treated primarily as a traditional agricultural activity rather than as an integrated agri-industrial sector.

This has constrained policy ambition and diluted investment outcomes.

Namibia exports premium beef that meets some of the world’s highest sanitary and traceability standards, yet captures only a limited share of downstream value, particularly in further processing, leather beneficiation and specialised export products.

The bill creates an opportunity to correct this structural imbalance.

Section 30 empowers the minister, following consultation and Cabinet input, to designate strategic economic sectors based on national interest, socio-economic inclusion, sustainability, innovation and public interest.

This provision exists precisely to recognise that not all sectors should be treated alike.

Some sectors require structured investment pathways, policy coordination and clear developmental obligations.

If red meat does not qualify under this logic, it is difficult to identify a sector that does.

Criticism has centred on the bill’s provision for performance agreements with investors in designated strategic sectors (Section 7).

These have been portrayed in some quarters as discouraging investment.

This interpretation is misplaced. Performance agreements are not punitive instruments; they are mechanisms for accountability and predictability.

They align investment approvals with measurable outcomes such as employment creation, skills transfer, local procurement, reinvestment and community benefit.

In the red meat sector, deeply embedded in rural livelihoods, veterinary public goods, export markets and food security, such alignment is not optional. It is essential.

This is where the Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco) assumes strategic significance.

As a public agri-industrial enterprise, Meatco already operates at the intersection of commercial activity and public interest.

Under the proposed investment framework, it can be repositioned as a national investment platform, a vehicle through which domestic and foreign capital is channelled into the red meat value chain in a manner consistent with the bill’s “net benefit to Namibia” test set out in Section 35.

That section requires investment decisions to consider value addition, SME participation, regional development, technology transfer, environmental impact and employment creation.

These are not abstract policy aspirations; they are operational benchmarks.

Fragmented, uncoordinated investments struggle to meet them.

Structured partnerships anchored by a national institution are far better placed to do so.

The bill also explicitly allows for joint venture requirements in certain designated sectors (Section 30(2)(c)).

In the context of red meat, this is not a constraint but an opportunity, particularly in feedlots, cold-chain logistics, further processing and leather beneficiation, ensuring foreign capital complements, rather than displaces, Namibian participation.

What ultimately undermines investor confidence is not regulation, but uncertainty. Investors seek clarity, predictability and coherence.

A red meat sector clearly designated as strategic, governed by transparent rules and aligned with national development priorities offers precisely that.
The real risk, therefore, is not that the investment bill goes too far, but that it is applied too cautiously.

If Namibia is serious about moving beyond commodity dependence, about inclusive rural development, and about using investment as a tool for industrialisation, then the red meat industry cannot remain peripheral.

The proposed investment promotion and facilitation bill provides the legal instruments to reposition it as a strategic sector.

What remains is the resolve to apply those instruments decisively and intelligently.

Investment laws do not transform economies on their own. Strategic choices do.

Namibia’s red meat industry is not a legacy sector to be managed defensively; it is a strategic asset that belongs at the centre of the country’s new investment framework.

• Albertus Aochamub is a former ambassador of Namibia to the French Republic (with concurrent accreditation to Portugal, Italy, Spain and Monaco). He is at the present the interim chief executive of Meatco and writes in that capacity.

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