Economic diplomacy is a factory floor, or it is a speech

Statement by the Shadow Minister of International Relations and Trade

The deputy minister of international relations and trade stood in a Windhoek clothing factory and said economic diplomacy with China had become development. New digital printing machines. A company that grew from a stall to about five hundred workers. A claim that Namibia should make at home what it still imports.

That is the right test. An embassy is an instrument or it is an ornament. The same rule applies to economic diplomacy. A speech at an inauguration is not a trade account.

Namibia's China relationship has been sold as strategy for years. The public pattern is familiar. Minerals leave. Finished goods come back. Memoranda multiply. The factory floor is where the claim either lands or fails.

If Dinapama's apprenticeships, skills transfer, and export lines into SADC and AfCFTA markets are real, say so with numbers. How many young Namibians are trained this year. What share of inputs is local. Which finished lines will cross a border under AfCFTA rules, not only under a ribbon.

The same day's business pages carried another China-era mineral story in a different register. The Karibib lithium project, dormant since 2022, is moving to a new United Kingdom vehicle. The Competition Commission says it intends to approve. The buyer promises drilling, on-site processing, and about thirty direct jobs. After liquidation upstream, a rescue is better than a dead licence. A promise of processing is still a promise until the conditions are public and the employment floor is enforceable.

IPC's ask is narrow.

1. Publish MIRT's economic-diplomacy scorecard for China and the UK for 2025 and 2026. Jobs. Local procurement. Value retained on Namibian soil. AfCFTA export lines opened.

2. Publish any Competition Commission conditions on Karibib processing timelines and employment before the sale is celebrated as foreign direct investment success.

3. Put apprenticeship and skills-transfer clauses into every major economic-diplomacy instrument that claims industrialisation.

Namibians first. Diplomacy that can be counted. Factories that train, not only pose.

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

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