The Plover and the Crocodile: What Namibia Should Ask of Every Partnership

There’s an image from the natural world worth borrowing for this moment: the plover and the crocodile.

The crocodile is by far the larger, more powerful animal. It could end the relationship in an instant. Yet it opens its jaws and lets the small bird pick clean the debris caught in its teeth.

The crocodile gets health it cannot give itself and the plover gets a meal it couldn’t find anywhere else.

Neither pretends the other is equal in size or strength. The relationship works because each is honest about what it needs and what it gives, and because it measurably benefits both.

That is the standard I want to hold up as Namibia deepens two of its most significant external relationships: the strategic partnership with the European Union (EU), now

approaching its fourth year, and the newly elevated “community with a shared future” agreed with China during president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s recent state visit.