16th October
Friday
10:09 AM
Dear Friend,
Welcome to the 5th installment of letters from Namibia From The Roadside community.
The aim of these letters is simple: to inspire your next trip, share places that leave a mark, and help you see Namibia with fresh eyes.
Well known for its safari vehicles and stunning lodges, today we shine a light on the surprising industries that are driving Namibia forward.
(Note: If you are actively planning a trip, our field-tested 2026 PDF eGuides are now live on the site to eliminate your planning friction. You can explore them here:
We hope you enjoy the article. It’s a short 8 minute read.
Behind The Sand Dunes - The Many Faces Of Namibia
The global travel restrictions of 2020 - 2023 feel like a distant memory. The murmured permanent changes to how humans travel and holiday did not transpire. In fact, global air travel is as prolific as it has ever been, and various cities and regions across the world are now dealing with perceived “overtourism”.
At first glance, tourism seems like a no-brainer for an economy - injections of foreign cash into a local economy by virtue of being a desirable place to visit. But we see tipping points in places like Barcelona, Venice, or Italy’s Amafli Coast where there is political pressure to in fact contain tourism, such as to reduce the strain on infrastructure, inflation of the local house prices, as well as simply reduce the human congestion of local areas. Some measures have included city taxes for visitors entering areas / staying in hotels, and restrictions on airbnbs.
An example out of Africa are the silverback gorillas in Uganda. To reduce the perceived environmental effects of the constant footfall, the Ugandan government took the decision to heavily increase the price of the famous mountain gorilla trekking. The logic is that traffic can be cut down significantly, while the revenue generated is protected by making this a very high-ticket experience.
An overlooked aspect is that over-reliance on tourism creates fragility. Once a sleepy local town, Tulum’s tropical beaches drew so many tourists that its very own international airport was constructed in 2023, even with the much larger international airport at Cancun only being a two-hour drive. But all it took were a few too many reports of petty crime, ever-increasing hotel rates and overcharging by taxis, and now high amounts of seaweed, that in 2025 it saw a drop in recorded visitor numbers by around 40%, and seeming to be in free fall. Its dedicated international airport sits eerily quiet as airlines have cut flights or dropped the route entirely.
If tourism is powerful but fragile, what does it look like when a country does it in a more balanced way? In the case of Tulum, it is thought that travellers are simply opting instead for Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. In these locations, it is supposed that tourists feel more welcomed than preyed-upon, public transport and accommodation is more transparent, safety is taken seriously by the local authorities, and the beaches are just as fantastic.
Far from the fate of a boomtown that slowly allows its golden goose to wither and die, Namibia has built a reputation as a year-round, countrywide destination, built around autonomous exploration.
In the travel world, Namibia is sometimes described as “Africa‑lite”. On the surface, that sounds like a slight: less raw, less intense, somehow less “real” than other African destinations. But strip away the glib label and what people are actually reacting to is a country where self‑driving is safe, conservation is taken seriously, lodges are professionally managed, and the whole visitor experience is coherent. Its tarred highways are excellent, and gravel roads are generally good by regional standards. The private sector has invested heavily in lodges, camps and guided activities that work smoothly for a first‑time visitor. In Namibia there are frequent police checkpoints - not to hassle tourists or extract bribes, but where you will be warmly asked to present a valid driving license. Petty crime continues to be an issue in the capital Windhoek, but incidents of crime on wider road trips are very low, and the country’s overall crime rate is orders of magnitude lower than neighboring South Africa and Angola.
Namibia has allowed the development of one of the most visitor‑friendly, low‑stress tourism environments in Africa. You have managed spaces, modest visitor numbers, and a tourism sector that is embedded in a broader conservation framework rather than simply layered on top of everyday life.
The phrase ‘Africa‑lite’ is not one we endorse; it oversimplifies Africa as a whole, but it does accidentally point to something real about Namibia’s unusually well‑run, low‑stress travel environment
The Many Faces Of Namibia
When it comes to small or middle‑income countries that attract foreign visitors, there are two broad stereotypes. The first is the “resort economy” idea: a country that more or less lives off tourism, selling sun and sand, with its fortunes tied to airline schedules and package‑holiday trends. The second is the “banana republic” cliché: a place underpinned by one big commodity export, vulnerable whenever that price falls.
As with many post-colonial countries, modern Namibia started out with foreign powers setting up ports, quickly booming upon the discovery of significant raw materials. In this case, in the early 20th century diamonds were discovered in the coastal sands around Lüderitzbucht. Towns like Lüderitz and Kolmanskop grew out of that era - places where the desert and the commodity boom met abruptly in a swirl of wealth, segregation, and eventual decline.
Refer to this article for the fascinating story of Kolmanskop - one of Namibia’s most moving attractions built out of the then unfathomable availability of diamonds atop the desert sands.
In that sense, Namibia did share a familiar pattern with other parts of the global south: extractive industries, focused on moving raw materials out rather than building manufacturing chains at home. But today, a combination of different large-scale, technology-intensive industries, built upon its commodities, has created an economic backbone in natural coexistence with its more famous tourism offering.
Fishing
Tucked against the Walvis Bay shore lie several massive fish processing plants, each with their own fleet of industrial-size vessels, and providing significant employment around this more populous area of the country.
In contrast to the Skeleton Coast’s reputation for shipwrecks and whale bones, these waters are some of the richest fishing grounds in Africa. This upwelling system from the Benguela current (the same current which creates the geographical marvel of Namibia’s oceanside desert) brings nutrient‑rich waters to the surface, supporting large populations of small pelagic fish like sardines and anchovies, as well as commercial species such as hake and monkfish. Much of these fish are exported as fully processed, store-ready products to Europe, the far-east and Australia.
For travellers, the fishing boats on the horizon at dawn make a delightful photo, and Swakop’s seafood restaurants are excellent. But the size and extent of this highly developed Namibian industry is mostly invisible unless you look for it. It is highly regulated, protected (i.e. from “rogue” foreign vessels entering the waters), and creates jobs that have nothing to do with safari jeeps. It’s one of the most prominent ways Namibia’s economy reaches beyond tourism.
In 2019, Namibia’s fishing industry was the subject of a major Al Jazeera investigation (“Anatomy of a Bribe”) that exposed extensive corruption linked to quota allocations and foreign fishing interests. Since then, the resulting “Fishrot” scandal has led to high‑profile arrests, ongoing trials, and unusually strong legal consequences for senior figures, including former ministers - a rare case in which politicians implicated in such a scheme have faced prosecution and, in some instances, custodial sentences.
Uranium
Namibia’s Erongo region encompasses the larger population centres of Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. It is landmarked by the great Spitzkoppe and Brandberg Mountain, and is frequented by some of the world’s only desert-adapted elephants. But underneath the ground of this region lies so much raw uranium that Namibia is the planet’s third largest producer after Kazakhstan and Canada. The Rossing mine, a short drive outside of Swakopmund, is the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, and at one time was producing 2% of the world’s uranium. Rossing mine is today one of the largest employers in Erongo.
Not to be misunderstood, raw uranium (“yellowcake”) is barely radioactive
While on the surface this sounds like another story of classic raw material extraction from Africa, uranium in Namibia is particularly well-positioned for a few reasons, in the context of an industry that has seen huge price booms over the past decade, and thought to have far more on the way, thanks to the severe shortage of active mines to feed the unprecedented resurgence of nuclear power station builds worldwide.
The first nuance is that Namibia is not typically lumped in with the broader investment‑risk context in Africa, where companies and financiers are cognisant that operational mines may be abruptly nationalised or assets are seized by unstable governments. In a country with limited domestic capital and expertise, foreign mining operators are the only practical option to unlock this resource, requiring significant upfront exploration cost and risk before a shovel even hits the ground. In both uranium and other extractives, what Namibia has tried to offer is a relatively predictable regime of mining licences, royalties and tax, combined with requirements for local participation and employment. In other words, a framework where the state can extract value without deterring the very investment needed to get mines off the ground. Debates about the optimal way for resource-rich countries to benefit their own societies will often draw strong opinions. In Namibia, the government has recently proposed increasing the local participation requirement to 50% (i.e. the level at which a mining interest should be owned by a local Namibian company or group of companies). The next highest comparable regime is Botswana’s 15%.
The second nuance of Namibia’s uranium story is geography. Canada, one of the three big names in uranium, is also sparsely populated, but many of its deposits sit under forests, lakes and areas with complex indigenous land rights, which can make exploration and development slower, politically sensitive, and very expensive. By contrast, much of Namibia’s known uranium sits in the Central Namib just inland from the coast - a desert landscape of gravel plains and low hills a short drive from Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, with existing roads, power lines and port access. It is land that is largely uninhabited, visually stark rather than densely settled, and already framed in policy as an industrial‑plus‑conservation zone rather than a frontier of new forest clearance.
As a result, the Erongo uranium district now has a cluster of operations: long‑running mines like Rössing and Husab, plus projects under development or exploration backed by companies from China, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. These firms invest in roads, power, export logistics and local employment, all within the licensing and royalty regime set out by the Namibian government. The location - close to a deep‑water port, in a geologically favourable belt, and with comparatively straightforward land access - gives Namibia a notable infrastructure and cost advantage over more remote, harder‑to‑reach deposits elsewhere.
The final nuance is less about Namibia specifically and more about uranium as a commodity. In historically extractive countries, the long‑term goal is generally thought to be to move beyond raw exports into full chain processing, then build out manufacturing and other sectors on top. The Gulf states and parts of Scandinavia are frequently cited as examples of countries that turned resource income into broader, diversified economies, whereas Africa’s colonial history tended to keep many countries focused on steady, cheap exports of raw materials.
Uranium is peculiar because the fuel cycle is highly concentrated: only a handful of facilities worldwide can enrich uranium at industrial scale.
Further, due to the structural supply deficit of raw uranium required to feed current and projected nuclear power stations worldwide, countries like Namibia with significant uranium deposits, favourable geography, and reliable investment conditions stand to benefit just by virtue of the value of the raw material. They may not host enrichment plants themselves, but they sit at the front end of a fuel chain that is begging for new mines.
Seen as a whole, Namibia starts to look very different from the caricatures that often attach to “resort countries” or single‑commodity economies. On the surface, it is the place of dunes, desert elephants, shipwrecks and safaris. Underneath that surface, though, there is a working country with multiple serious industries: full-cycle fisheries, and desert sands on the radar of every international uranium-mining company. While long past the days of Kolmanskop, Namibia also continues highly technical offshore diamond dredging, and the recent talk of the town is the massive offshore oil discovery.
When our friend Attie, owner of the Oryx Guest House in Oranjemund, asked his wife if she had heard about the massive oil discovery on their doorstep, she responded asking if he’s sure it isn’t just the Land Rover leaking
At the same time, it is a story as old as time that high mineral wealth seldom translates into tangible prosperity for the broader population. This phenomenon is so common that it is known as the “resource curse”. Extractive industries are still extractive; even when they are relatively well managed, they carry environmental and social costs that require careful regulation. Uranium and offshore oil may bring in significant revenue, but without strong institutions and deliberate choices about how that money is used, they can just as easily entrench existing divides.
On a broader level, what makes Namibia’s position interesting is the combination of factors that, taken together, point in an encouraging direction. A very low population relative to its land area reduces some of the pressure on jobs and land; tourism overlays much of the country with infrastructure, connectivity and a steady flow of foreign visitors whose spending is not tied solely to commodity prices. Key sectors are diverse enough that the economy does not hinge on a single mine or crop, even if they are still largely focused on primary exports. There are visible steps towards tackling corruption and maintaining a reputation for relative stability, and crime levels remain low by regional standards.
Time will tell how these factors will improve a society that, notwithstanding all of the above, still has high levels of poverty and inequality. What should be encouraging for Namibia’s current and prospective travellers is that your visit is not only welcomed, but part of a wider programme that conserves wildlife and creates employment, as part of an even larger economic mix that is developing Namibia as a premier African country.
The Swakopmund Museum has an exhibit about Uranium in Namibia. The new Maritime Museum at the Luderitz waterfront includes an exhibit about Namibia’s offshore diamond dredging as well as its development of desalination plants
***
P.S. if you haven’t already, check out the Namibia From The Roadside worldwide merch store:
namibiafromtheroadside.com/collections/merchandise
