President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has taken her bid to set up an oil refinery in Namibia to Botswana and Zambia.
Nandi-Ndaitwah was in Botswana and Zambia last week as her second and third working visits after Angola.
While in Botswana, Nandi-Ndaitwah and her counterpart, Boko Duma, agreed to pursue the feasibility of pooling resources for the joint construction of a refinery that would serve the needs of the two countries and the region.
She also had a similar agreement with her Zambian counterpart, Hakainde Hichilema.
The leaders agreed that such a refinery would benefit Namibia, Zambia and other regional markets.
Nandio-Ndaitwah first spoke about setting up the refinery at the Namibia International Energy Conference in April 2025.
She said setting up an oil refinery is part of Namibia’s efforts to maximise the economic benefit of the nation’s energy resources and promote local participation in the sector.
Nandi-Ndaitwah said local content also includes value addition, such as developing downstream capacity and infrastructure like a refinery.
The oil and gas directorate now falls under the President’s Office, after Nandi-Ndaitwah said she would want to monitor it closely.
Namibia expects TotalEnergies and BW Energy to announce their final investment decisions by late next year.
Namcor’s former managing director, Imma Mulunga, told the media that an oil refinery would be expensive, with minimal profits.
Mulunga said that competing on the global market with dominant players would be hard.
“No private sector investor has to date managed to pull it off, despite many proposals over the years to build a refinery in Namibia,” Mulunga said.
He also suggested that Namibia should consider a refinery only after producing its first oil.
“However, it should be a private sector-led initiative based on a positive feasibility study yet to be conducted,” he said.
TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanné also advised Nandi-Ndaitwah against building an oil refinery.
He said Namibia’s small market size would leave it struggling to compete against larger economies.
“Namibia would have to compete with other very large refineries – in China, India, Saudi Arabia,” Pouyanné said.
“I fully understand the logic behind the idea, because of course the citizens of Namibia would like to benefit from better access to affordable gasoline. We will study ways to help,” he said.
