Namibia’s Import Habit is Killing Future jobs

While mining and some agriculture provide raw exports, the country imports the vast majority of manufactured and value-added goods.

The ‘order with me’ phenomenon popularised through social media groups, WhatsApp catalogues, cross-border shopping trips and online platforms has accelerated this.

Instead of supporting local manufacturers, tailors, furniture makers, food processors and light industrialists, consumers and retailers chase cheaper, often subsidised or dumped imports. Profits flow out. Supply chains for design, raw material processing, assembly, packaging, logistics and after-sales service are built and sustained in foreign countries.

Operational capital that could have financed local factories, training centres and innovation is instead consumed by importers’ margins and foreign exchange outflows.

A growing ‘import culture’ has emerged in which the easy money from trading finished goods becomes a permanent preference over the harder, longer-term work of building factories and creating sustainable employment.