Namibia urged to bet on farms over minerals

Namibia could substantially grow its agricultural exports — including beef, charcoal and high-value fruit, but realising that potential will require deliberate policy changes, an economist has said.

Robin Shearbourne, who presented at the recently concluded Namibia-EU Business Forum, said Namibia's export base remained heavily concentrated in a handful of commodities, with uranium, gold, fish products and diamonds accounting for more than 80% of total export value by his analysis.

While those four product lines offered limited scope for further value addition, Shearbourne said agriculture presented a different picture.

"With the right land management policies, we could double the carrying capacity of our commercial farms and therefore produce a lot more meat for export to the rest of the world," he said. 

"Charcoal, I think there is still huge potential. We are just starting to tap that."

High-value fruit as a gateway 

He also pointed to high-value fruit as an area of growing promise.

"We produce table grapes, blueberries now, dates. I think we could massively increase the volumes of all those products for export, whether they go to the EU or to other countries," Shearbourne said.

The comments come as Namibia and the EU have set out a roadmap to 2030 targeting greater beneficiation of critical minerals and the development of green hydrogen. Shearbourne acknowledged the long-term logic of that agenda but was cautious about near-term returns.

"A lot of these products are not commercially viable at the moment. I see no harm in trying, but I don't see immediate short to medium-term potential in any of these things," he said. "That is why I go back to charcoal, meat and high-value fruits — there is a lot more quicker potential for us to realise in some of those products."

Lack of export diversification a concern 

He also raised a structural concern that cut across all export discussions: Namibia had not meaningfully changed its manufactured export mix in 36 years. High energy costs and a small domestic market made it difficult to attract the investment needed to process raw materials locally, he said.

On the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Shearbourne was measured. Exports to AfCFTA markets outside southern Africa remained very small, and Namibia's primary commodities, uranium, gold and diamonds, were not products the rest of the continent was in the market to buy.

Where he did see continental potential was in fish and salt.

"We have already started shipping salt to other African countries. Some of our fish products are already very popular, the horse mackerel, for example," he said.

Shearbourne cautioned against fixating on the AfCFTA as an end in itself, arguing the more important discipline was identifying what specific markets, wherever they were, actually wanted to buy.

"We need to focus much more on what we can produce and what the rest of the world wants to buy from us," he said.