Statement on the call by the President for Namibian businesses to use the African Continental Free Trade Area

Statement by the Shadow Minister of International Relations and Trade

1. The Independent Patriots for Change supports President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s call for Namibian businesses to use the African Continental Free Trade Area and reach regional markets.

2. However, the Ongwediva figures expose the Government’s failure to match its rhetoric with capacity. According to reports, 1,872 businesses applied for space, yet only 485 were accommodated. That left 1,417 entrepreneurs, 75.7%, or nearly three out of every four applicants, outside the gate. A terrible failure to provide access to markets desperately needed by our entrepreneurs.

3. The same contradiction is visible on the Northern Trade Corridor. The reported N$329 million, 57-kilometre Ondangwa–Oshikango railway has gone more than two years without a TransNamib train, while Government plans to spend N$952.1 million on railway infrastructure in 2026/27, including N$946 million in development expenditure, and claims a 1,000-kilometre upgrade target.

4. Before asking taxpayers for more, Government must explain why the line already built cannot reliably move people and goods. This is not a minor administrative inconvenience.

5. The Namibia Statistics Agency’s June trade bulletin put Namibia’s first-half 2026 trade deficit at N$20 billion, imports of N$87.2 billion against exports of N$67.2 billion.

6. Five raw commodities reportedly made up 65.5% of June exports. A country cannot close that gap by repeating AfCFTA at conferences while its entrepreneurs lack space, its corridor lacks service, and its export basket remains concentrated in raw materials.

7. Government must publish a costed, year-round OATF expansion plan; connect it to export-readiness, standards, finance, digital platforms, customs and buyer matchmaking; and table a Northern Corridor plan with freight targets, border arrangements, maintenance indicators and annual reporting.

8. The N$952.1 million rail allocation must be judged by trains, tonnes, jobs and contracts, not by the size of the announcement.

9. The IPC will place these failures before Parliament through Notices of Questions and a Notice of Motion on AfCFTA implementation and public-value infrastructure.

10. We are not anti-investment or anti-development. We are against development theatre: speeches without space, rail without service, and trade policy without delivery. AfCFTA must mean access, not accession; markets, not meetings; and jobs, not just photographs.

Namibia is all we have
Namibia is not for sale
We must and can save it!

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