PM Ngurare targets NEEEF closure
The government is keen to bring finality to the New Equitable Economic Empowerment Framework (NEEEF) following a fresh round of consultations with public interest groups, Prime Minister Elijah Ngurare said.
This announcement follows an engagement held by the Bank of Namibia (BoN) this week. Ngurare, who addressed staff members of the central bank, said it was concerning that for almost 15 years, nothing had been done to bring the policy framework to a conclusion.
“We are on it and we need to bring it to finality,” Ngurare said during a question and answer session held during the engagement, indicating willingness on the part of the government to bring the matter to a close.
Consultations ongoing
“We meet with the Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NCCI) and other stakeholders. NEEEF has been dormant for over 10 years. We gave them food for thought, and we told them to come back to us in two weeks so we can bring finality to that issue. We are on it, and we need to bring finality to it,” he said.
Despite the absence of the empowerment framework, the government had, in the meantime, introduced policy interventions that sought to distribute wealth among Namibians equitably, Ngurare said.
“What you should appreciate is that some of the instruments we now have in place, like the youth fund and others, were not there to empower previously disadvantaged Namibians. We believe that there is a way that you can structure what we call natural resource beneficiation, and many other policies that we have in the sixth National Development Plan (NDP6), to ensure every Namibian and every village has empowerment of a sort,” he said.
World Bank advice
A study commissioned by the World Bank in 2023 concluded that there is no need for the empowerment framework, which is set to be introduced at a time when value addition and local empowerment are being pushed in Namibia’s green hydrogen, oil, and gas industries.
The idea behind NEEEF was to ensure a balanced redistribution of wealth and resources in the country. The emotive proposed law originally sought to compel investors to sell at least 24% ownership—or as otherwise determined by the Minister of Trade—to previously disadvantaged Namibians.
The government has since shelved its hardline stance, but investors remain unsure of setting up shop in Namibia until there is absolute certainty about what the law will look like.
In its national green hydrogen strategy development, the World Bank study observed that no general local content or ownership legislation is currently enacted in Namibia, although NEEEF remains one of the ways the government seeks to address the issue.
