RMB Namibia presents Namibia’s future scenarios

The upheaval of geopolitical developments across the world has created so much uncertainty in the recent past, resulting in increasing relevance for scenario planning tools to assist organizations navigate through the complexities of the global economic system.

“The concept of scenario planning is not new but remains a useful framework to purposefully think about the prevailing socio-economic issues and their implications for the future of Namibia”, says the Minister of Mines and Energy, Hon. Tom Alweendo at the RMB Future Events - The Presentation of Namibia Future Scenarios.

This event was held in collaboration with the Economic Association of Namibia (EAN), the Hanns Seidel Foundation Namibia (HSF), Cirrus Capital and the South African Centre for Risk Analysis.

The central question around which the scenarios were developed was, “Will 90% of Namibians be in gainful employment by 2030?”, with the scenarios identifying the factors that would contribute to or hinder that most desirable outcome.

“We identified 134 trends and grouped these into twelve key driving forces which were then ranked in terms of their impact and uncertainty in order to develop all-encompassing scenarios”, says Rowland Brown, the co-founder of Cirrus Capital as he presented the final report to the audience comprising of business leaders and economists.

The four scenarios as determined by the key-driving-forces were the country’s Ability to Reform, and the nature of reform – towards an open economy with high degrees of economic freedom for all Namibians, or towards a closed economy highly controlled by the state. These scenarios were titled “getting off on the wrong foot, foot on the accelerator, one foot in the grave, and foot off the brake”.

Dr Frans Cronje, previously of the South African Centre for Risk Analysis who also played a critical role in structuring the methodological approach to the report emphasized the fact that Namibia is strategically located and has great potential to attract foreign investments.

“However, this will be highly dependent on its ability to reform, embrace youth aspirations and leverage on oil discovery and green developments, to mention just a few,” explained Cronje.

In the same vein, commercial banks have an important role to play in the transformational journey of building a globally competitive Namibia through intermediating capital from savers to borrowers in a commercially sound manner.

These were the sentiments of Sepo Haihambo, the Executive Officer for FNB Commercial while participating on a panel discussion at the same event.

In addition, the political will by government to forge partnerships with the private sector in driving development initiatives is imperative above all possible considerations.

“The ability for the private sector to initiate and build coalition with government to develop new viable industries presents an opportunity to promote entrepreneurship and sustainable business hubs,”concluded, Daniel Motinga, the Head of Public Sector Banking at RMB.