Yes, Namibian Banks are Profit Machines

THE EXCELLENT OPINION piece by Roman Grynberg, titled ‘Banks block Namibia’s Development’ (29 April 2026) raises crucial issues about the role of banks in capital accumulation.

The story of Ernest is not an unfortunate bureaucratic misunderstanding, but a textbook example of how Namibia’s financial system reproduces social inequality and protects big business at the expense of working youth.

Nothing about Ernest’s case is accidental. It reflects the structural logic of a banking sector designed to serve wealth, not need. Ernest is not an exception. He is the rule.

Namibia’s banks are not failing to help him – they are functioning exactly as capitalist institutions are meant to function: to allocate credit upward, to protect shareholder profits, to avoid risk even when the ‘risk’ is manufactured, and to keep the poor dependent on informal lenders, employers, and asset owners.

The system is not broken. It is working as designed.

Credit flows to those who already have capital. Banks in Namibia overwhelmingly lend to salaried middle‑class workers, property buyers, established businesses, and politically connected elites.

They do not lend to young people, informal workers, first‑generation entrepreneurs, or the working poor. This is not a technical issue. It is a class filter.

Creditworthiness is defined in a way that excludes the majority. ‘Affordability’ criteria punish the poor for being poor. The bank’s justification – Ernest has no deposits, no credit history, no assets – is the classic circular trap of capitalism: You cannot get credit because you have no assets. You cannot get assets because you cannot get credit. This is how poverty becomes self‑generating.

Namibia’s financial system is one of the most profitable and exclusive in Africa. It is built on colonial land dispossession, apartheid-era banking structures and foreign ownership of major banks.

Without transforming banks, Namibia cannot transform its economy. Ernest’s story reflects the logic of a system designed to keep people like him in a permanent state of precarity while ensuring that capital remains concentrated in the hands of banks, corporations, and a small elite.

Credit is not neutral. It is a mechanism through which the capitalist class decides who may accumulate assets and who must remain a worker.

Ernest is denied a loan, not because he is ‘risky’, but because he belongs to the class the profit system requires to remain trapped in wage labour and to be dependent.

This is the classic cycle of structural poverty.

The Bank of Namibia’s (BoN) refusal to intervene is not bureaucratic neutrality – it is class discipline. The central bank’s job in a capitalist economy is to protect private banks and to prevent ‘excessive’ lending to the poor.

It is not designed to democratise access to capital. It is set up to preserve the class structure created by colonialism and maintained after political independence.

The BoN and commercial banks are in a class alliance for banks to extract profit while the central bank protects the conditions for that extraction.

CREDIT AS A PUBLIC GOOD

A post-capitalist central bank in Namibia should be built on three principles, namely, that credit is a public good, not a commodity; that finance must serve development, not shareholder profit; and that the working class and youth must have access to productive assets, not only the wealthy.

Instead of leaving lending decisions to commercial banks, such a central bank would fund cooperatives and worker‑owned businesses, support small producers, farmers, and community enterprises, finance public housing, transport, and infrastructure, and ensure that productive sectors receive affordable credit.

Credit becomes a tool for building a more equal economy, not reinforcing inequality.

To prevent exploitation, a left-wing central bank can cap interest rates on small loans, regulate fees, restrict predatory lending and limit loan‑shark activity.

Instead of focusing only on inflation, a progressive central bank should have full employment as a monetary goal and must finance public investment. It should target job creation and industrial development. It can support public works programmes, renewable energy projects, social housing, etc.

This creates jobs and builds national capacity.

In a post-capitalist financial system, Ernest would automatically qualify for a youth enterprise loan. The central bank would guarantee his loan. Interest rates would be low and predictable.

Commercial banks would be required to lend to him. He could join or form a cooperative with other drivers. He would not be trapped in a poverty cycle created by private finance. The system would treat Ernest not as a risk, but as a citizen with a right to productive assets.

It is about changing the purpose of finance from protecting wealth to building a society where everyone can participate in economic life.
It transforms credit from a privilege of the rich into a tool for collective development.

– The authors are members of the Marxist Group of Namibia.

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