Editorial: Who Gets to Define ‘Development’, and Who Profits?

National Planning Commission director general Kaire Mbuende’s remarks that “Namibia should not be forced to choose between development and conservation” risk being hijacked by those who seek self-enrichment at the population’s expense.

Speaking at the African Green Industries Summit at Swakopmund this month, Mbuende said concerns about large-scale industrial development must be taken seriously and the government’s development ambition is to ensure “responsible development”.

He said environmental and social assessments help determine “where development should proceed, where mitigation is necessary and where development should be avoided”.

Some media reports sought to link Mbuende’s remarks to ongoing conflicts in the Kunene region between mining licence magnates and ecotourism conservancies.

Mbuende’s reference to large-scale industrial development has also been dragged into the renewed debate over phosphate mining, following the controversial environmental clearance certificate awarded by environmental commissioner Timoteus Mufeti to Knowledge Katti’s Namibia Marine Phosphate (NMP) in August.

Mbuende’s statement may have been clumsy and he did not mean “conservation must not stifle development”, as it is portrayed in some circles.

After all, conservation is at the heart of sustainable development, which most countries have committed themselves to promoting.

Caution should guide industrial activities in sensitive wildlife areas like the Kunene region, where Namibia has become a global beacon for the recovery of black rhino populations and the survival of desert-adapted lions, elephants and other species.

In October 2022, The Namibian detailed a “N$50 million lithium mining heist” involving Chinese-owned Xinfeng Investments, in which Timoteus Mashuna was named as among those implicated.

The allegations implicated then mines minister’s technical adviser, Ralph Muyamba.

The allegations were reported to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and are still being investigated.

Xinfeng has subsequently faced government action over alleged illegal mining.

Mashuna also holds mining claims at the centre of a court fight over black rhino habitat south-west of Khorixas, where the High Court interdicted mining in October 2025 pending a review.

At the forefront of phosphate mining is Katti, whose business dealings have courted controversy for years and whose NMP project puts the question of mining versus other established economic interests on the national agenda.

Debates about so-called conservation versus development deserve closer scrutiny. Who is pushing for what, who stands to benefit, and who carries the cost?

Concerns about displacing well-established ecotourism in conservancy areas should not simply be dismissed as “stifling development”.

Conservancy tourism has funded education, drilled boreholes, paid for housing, toilets and electricity in rural areas. In some conservancies, wildlife tourism provides ongoing benefits to communities that are comparable in significance to social grants.

Namibia’s communal conservancies support roughly 240 000 people in rural areas and have become a model of community-based natural resource management.

The first communal conservancies were registered in 1998. This is development that has already been delivered for close to three decades. Contrast that with job creation promises and high salaries from mining companies that can prove far less enduring than advertised.

The Xinfeng saga should remind us that mining licences and the money surrounding them can create very different beneficiaries from the communities in whose name “development” is promoted.

Environment, forestry and tourism minister Indileni Daniel told the National Assembly this week that tourism had created more than 57 000 jobs over the past five years.

Namibia would be staking an existing industry on extraction that may last a few decades at best. When the resource runs out, the businesses and livelihoods that depended on the land and sea it damaged could go with it.

Nauru’s experience with phosphate is a reminder of what can happen when an economy becomes dependent on the extraction of a finite resource. Phosphate made the island briefly rich, but mining stripped most of its land and the deposits ran out.

The environment ministry should publish the full record behind the Sandpiper clearance and let the appeals be heard in the open. The ACC, which has had the Xinfeng matter for nearly four years, should tell the public where it stands.

Rent-seekers should not be allowed to define Namibia’s developmental trajectory.

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