EDITORIAL
Namibians woke up to quite some good news last week.
The Namibia Statistics Agency reported that the country’s economy grew by N$6 billion in the second quarter of 2025 to reach N$64.8 billion, painting a picture of progress.
According to the NSA, real economic growth in the second quarter of 2025 was 1.6%, compared to 3.3% in the same period last year.
Growth was driven by tertiary industries, with wholesale and retail trade expanding by 5.2%, education by 5.6%, financial services by 5.0%, and public administration by 3.7%.
Government final consumption rose by 4.2%, supported by an increase in public servants, while exports jumped 18.5% and imports declined by 1.6%.
These headline figures sound promising, but they tell only part of the story.
They are so convincing that if you show them to any investor who wants to set up shop in Namibia, they will not think twice.
In fact they will be naive to even be thinking.
Alas, not so for the average Namibian.
The average Namibian in the street can least relate to this purported growth.
In fact, any average Namibian who has had the reality of thinking of where and when the next plate of soup and fat cake will come from, does not feel this growth in the pocket.
It is a daily routing for many to wake and face the realities of unemployment, zero income and an even ballooning cost of living.
You do not have to be in Namibia to know that even the capital Windhoek is a city of two faces.
It is the bright city lights for those in the northern suburbs where the sun never hit the forehead and a continued misery for those in the southern part of the city where a sea of poverty is a reality.
Should the economy just be about huge figures while many have torn pockets.
Namibia needs a hard though transformational plan that translates these good economic figures into a few coins in the pockets of many.
It just cannot be a game of numbers, damn it!
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