Government ‘shoulders’ more SME growth
Members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy, Industry, Public Administration and Planning visited beneficiaries of the Equipment Aid Scheme under the Ministry of Trade in Keetmanshoop at the end of January. The beneficiaries presented an outline of their business ventures and explained how the support has significantly improved their business operations.
The Equipment Aid Scheme falls under the Directorate for Regional Economic Development, where Deputy Director Pinehas Shinyala oversees small and medium enterprise (SME) policy and regional offices.
Shinyala has been involved with the scheme since its inception under the late President Hage Geingob’s administration. He said the scheme initially performed well, benefiting from a strong budget, before allocation reductions in 2015 led to its closure. Under former trade minister Lucia Iipumbu, the scheme was revived in 2023, accompanied by improved reporting and verification systems, as well as stronger monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
In the 2023/24 financial year, the scheme supported 58 Namibian entrepreneurs, followed by 70 beneficiaries in 2024/25. Advertisements for beneficiaries for the 2025/26 financial year closed on 9 February.
One of the most significant reforms introduced by Iipumbu to the revived scheme, Shinyala said, was the shift from awarding grants and then purchasing the requested equipment, to issuing proof of payment for the equipment together with an approval letter addressed to recipients. “With the equipment being distributed, the process is now more efficient,” he said.
Regional reach
Government aims to identify 12 to 13 beneficiaries per region and to spend approximately N$14 million in total during the current financial year, he said. “This works out to about N$75 000 per applicant, along with small amounts for raw materials where needed,” he added.
Eligible beneficiaries are drawn from a wide range of manufacturing enterprises, including those involved in small-scale value addition, Shinyala explained. These include agro-processing and agricultural businesses, gemstone and dimension stone processing, cosmetics producers, manufacturers of traditional oils, and even small-scale mining operations.
Regional equipment aid committees have been established to protect local community interests, he added.
Government interventions are intended to address challenges within Namibia’s SME landscape, which, according to the deputy director, requires reflection and reform.
“SMEs support many people and contribute up to 12% of GDP, with some 40 000 enterprises employing around 200 000 people. Many are informal businesses, and most are traders rather than manufacturers, which falls outside our area of focus. There are serious limitations because many of these businesses are not run scientifically. We do not have a long history of educating people, and we need to educate more. However, there are some impressive manufacturing enterprises. Nevertheless, we need more structured entrepreneurship programmes to address failures caused by missing skills components. Access to finance is also a serious impediment,” he said.
Success stories
Among the scheme’s success stories, Shinyala highlighted its contribution to the establishment of Dinapama Manufacturing, the FabLab previously hosted at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), and the Okakarara and Ongwediva Trade Fairs. He said the scheme aligns with other ministerial initiatives aimed at easing access to sites and business premises at established SME parks around the country.
A total of 148 SME and industrial parks have also been built nationwide.
“We also assist with marketing and facilitate support from larger enterprises, because many of our shops are not investing in improving the quality of products from SMEs,” he said. “Quality issues also affect us.”
Shinyala advocates an approach in which larger businesses and government shoulder some of the burden involved in improving, upscaling and expanding SMEs. He pointed to the development of the so-called “Asian Tigers” - Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - where accelerated industrial growth was achieved from the 1960s to the 1990s through sustained investment in productivity.
“We also need to start thinking about an economic model that invests in production. We are a small economy with a small population, but we can still benefit from the ‘shouldering’ principle, where large off-takers help small enterprises build capacity to ensure a reliable supply of quality inputs. This allows small businesses to produce more and sell more, leading to shared benefits, prosperity and increased value. We need less focus on the consumptive sector and more resources allocated to the productive sector,” he said. “That will form the basis of industrialisation.”
Other low-hanging opportunities for growing Namibia’s SME sector include metal fabrication, “which we really should pay attention to,” as well as pharmaceuticals, where production can be disaggregated so that small enterprises specialise in specific, limited products, he said.
