• Suné van Wyk

THE DECISIONS THAT BUILD A COUNTRY

Namibia’s future will be shaped not only by the investments we attract, but by the everyday decisions leaders make about people, opportunity and potential.

Somewhere in Namibia today, a young graduate is searching for a first opportunity, while an employer is searching for someone with experience. Both are waiting for the other to solve the problem.

Behind that young person may stand a family that stretched limited resources, celebrated a graduation and believed that education would open a door. With every unanswered application, that hope becomes harder to sustain. Behind the vacant position stands a business that needs capable people to grow. Bringing the two together is more than recruitment. It is part of building Namibia.

Official unemployment stands at 36.9%, with youth unemployment at 44.4%. Yet organisations struggle to find the skills they need. As Namibia attracts growing interest in oil and gas, mining, tourism, energy and logistics, the question is not only whether opportunity will come. It is whether Namibians and Namibian businesses will be equipped to participate meaningfully in it.

Across coaching conversations, executive teams and boardrooms, I repeatedly encounter the same tension: leaders want capable people, but operational pressures leave too little time for developing them. Talent is treated as something the market should provide, fully formed, when a vacancy arises.

But Namibia cannot recruit its way out of a national skills shortage. Every organisation must become a place where capability is deliberately created.

This begins with young people. Too many entry-level positions require experience that first-time jobseekers have never had the opportunity to acquire. Many organisations also lack the time or management capacity to develop inexperienced employees. Artificial intelligence may place further pressure on some junior roles in future, making it even more important to preserve meaningful pathways into the workplace.

“Young people need more than internships in name. They need real responsibility, feedback, mentoring and opportunities to develop judgement.”

Young people need more than internships in name. They need real responsibility, feedback, mentoring and opportunities to develop judgement. Someone must be willing to give them their first real chance.

The same responsibility applies when organisations appoint consultants and specialist suppliers. Too often, external expertise becomes the automatic choice, even when credible capability exists locally. International expertise is valuable where skills are genuinely scarce, but it should complement local knowledge and transfer capability rather than replace it.

Choosing a qualified Namibian professional or business does more than award a contract. It helps someone build experience, employ others, develop credibility and compete for future opportunities. Where local providers are not yet ready, responsible leadership asks what exposure, partnerships or standards would help them become competitive.

Every time capable local expertise is overlooked without serious consideration, we lose more than just a contract. We lose an opportunity to build confidence, retain knowledge and show the next generation that it is possible to succeed from here.

At the other end of the career journey, experienced employees are preparing to retire. When they leave, organisations lose more than technical knowledge. They lose relationships, context and sound judgement developed over decades. A handover document written during someone’s final month cannot preserve this. Knowledge transfer requires mentoring, understudies and the gradual transfer of responsibility and trust.

Namibia is small enough for individual decisions to matter. A young employee given a genuine opportunity, a local supplier entrusted with meaningful work, or an experienced specialist asked to prepare a successor may appear to be a small intervention. Yet it can change a life, support a family, strengthen a business and contribute to the country we share.

For every leader, three questions are worth considering: Am I developing people or merely using the capability they already have?

Do our recruitment and procurement decisions strengthen Namibia’s future capability?

Who could succeed because I chose to see, trust and develop their potential?

These are not easy questions, and seniority does not remove blind spots. Coaching creates a disciplined and confidential space in which leaders can test assumptions, see different perspectives and translate insight into more effective action. Perhaps this is the deeper measure of leadership: not only what we achieved during our own tenure, but whose future became possible because we were there. Who was given a beginning? Who grew into responsibility? What capability remained after we had moved on?

Every appointment, contract, conversation and development opportunity carries consequences beyond today. Every organisation can either consume talent or create it.

Our decisions matter – to the young person searching for a beginning, to the experienced person carrying knowledge, to the local business waiting to be trusted and to every family whose future is connected to their success.

The Namibia we hope for will not be built by somebody else. It will be built, decision by decision, through the choices each of us makes now.

Birgit Hoffmann is an ICF professional certified coach as well as an industrial and organisational psychologist with more than 5,500 coaching hours.

She works with senior leaders, executives and boards and brings additional leadership experience as a chief executive officer and board director.

From the October 2026 issue

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