2.1 The Most Binding Constraints for the Median Industry

In 2020, the Growth Lab at Harvard University partnered with the Government of Namibia to produce research-based inputs for a policy strategy aimed at promoting sustainable and inclusive growth. Within the context of the research initiative, the Growth Lab team developed a Growth Diagnostic aimed at identifying the most binding constraints to productivity and investment for the median tradable sector in the country forces (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022). These efforts are relevant for the PPDs at the sector level, as they provide priors regarding potential binding constraints firms in selected sectors might face. The results of this exercise shall inform the PPD but would not have the final word regarding which are the most critical issues to address: There might be constraints that are relevant for a particular sector that do not constrain the median sector, as well as constraints for the median sector that are not relevant for a particular sector.

The Growth Diagnostic of Namibia identified three binding constraints. From a knowledge agglomeration standpoint, Namibia was missing the productive capabilities and skills necessary to sustain long periods of growth and create good jobs. The low degree of know-how agglomeration inferred from its productive structure – gathered by the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) – left little opportunities for diversification that could be pursued by redeploying existing skills. As the marginal cost of acquiring new capabilities at low levels of agglomeration tends to be high, the government needed to take a more active role in sorting coordination and information failures associated with productive diversification and self-discovery. Public–private dialogs at the sector level might be the cornerstone of a diversification strategy by identifying missing inputs or coordination problems that affect the productivity of existing industries and designing and implementing interventions to address them.

A shortage of specialized skills also constrains Namibia’s growth prospects – three empirical facts derived from research based on Labor Force Surveys pointed in this direction. First, there were significant wage premiums in skill-intensive industries and occupations. Second, highly educated and experienced workers faced the lowest unemployment rates by a considerable margin. Third, skill-intensive industries were growing at a rate considerably lower than the rest of the economy. Skill shortage seemed to be constraining not only existing industries but also the development of new engines of growth, limiting access to opportunities for Namibians across all skill levels. Missing skills at the top of the spectrum depressed job creation at the bottom. The evidence suggests that highly skilled foreigners tend to function as complements – rather than substitutes – to Namibian workers: industries with larger shares of high-skill workers tend to pay low-skill workers significantly higher wages.

Lastly, policy uncertainty was reported to hinder productivity, economic diversification, and foreign talent attraction. Existing levels of policy uncertainty – instability or absence of appropriate regulations, worries about potential issues associated with property rights, inefficiencies, or biases in the ruling of domestic courts – might not deter investments in resource-based industries but might be a hurdle for other types of industries, especially the ones that have a choice regarding their international location. A simpler and more transparent investment environment might be necessary to attract these investments, complemented with a more comprehensive set of international investment protection treaties.

These constraints are a great starting point for PPDs, as they provide general priors on what might be preventing a typical or median firm from being more competitive. They inform the efforts of the sponsoring entity and supply rigorous and data-driven inputs that can be used to kick-start the dialog and set the tone for the meetings, where they shall be discussed and validated by participants on Productivity Task Forces (PTF) at the sector level.

2.2 Previous Public–Private Dialogs

Most developing countries have experimented with PPDs in some form. Whether these efforts were focused on specific sectors, on issues that cut across different economic activities, or much broader matters affecting the general investment climate, it is crucial to take stock of the country’s previous experience and try to incorporate as many learnings as possible within the policy design.

In the case of Namibia, there were some efforts to launch PPD at the sector level in 2012, sponsored by the Ministry of Industrialization and Trade (MIT). The date of launching of this first precursor of PTFs came somewhat late – even considering that Namibia just got its independence in 1990 – a feature that can be attributed to the distrust between the public and the private sector, derived from the legacy of exclusion of apartheid. “We simply do not have a culture or background that is propense to public-private dialogs.”Footnote ¹

In particular, the convening party within the MTI was the Namibian Trade Forum (NTF), an entity created in 2010 with the mandate to become “the indispensable PPD platform for a conducive business environment” by “influencing trade policy and economic development.”Footnote ² The first wave of PPD was launched in four economic sectors: Agriculture, fisheries, services, and manufacturing. These four would be followed shortly by the Local Authorities Dialog, a series of PPD for Urban and Rural Development, were the NTF acted as an intermediary between the government and local community leaders. Interestingly, the dialogs were recorded as part of the MIT PPD initiative, despite not having private firms explicitly involved. A second wave of PPD brought together government officials at the MIT with private sector representatives from Business and Finance Services; Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT); Transportation and Logistics; Tourism, and Energy. The meetings did not have a pre-established frequency. Still, they met whenever the NTF considered it appropriate or had recorded enough progress on a particular issue to report to the group.

We have not been able to document how long these series of PPDs were held. From our interviews with officials at the MTI, NTF, and private sector representatives, we understand that the ones holding on for longer were those focused on fisheries and agriculture. In the former case, the dialogs were carried out at the level of a committee formed by a confederation of Namibian fisheries. In the case of agriculture, the list of participants suggests that the convention was much broader, including officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, representatives from labor unions, agricultural boards across the country, and a few private sector firms.

Despite the broad scope of the NTF mission and the wide range of Simultaneous dialogs in place, the fact that the NTF hosted these PPDs did influence the type of issues raised by the private sector participants, which were primarily focused on trade regulations and market access. Either because the mandate received by these PPDs was narrow or because participants were prone to bring up issues where the convening authority had some direct influence, the fact remains that most of the problems were related to international trade, such as access to foreign markets, tariff, and nontariff barriers, import and export quotas.

Naturally, most of the matters where progress was recorded across these PPDs belong to the realm of action of the MTI. When issues such as skill shortages and government arrears were raised, MTI officials were forced to reach out to other public entities to address them. It is here that the PPD lost some traction. Impatient at the slow pace of progress, private sector representatives started reaching out to government officials outside the scope of PPD, ultimately undermining the PPD initiative. “We were not recognized as a legitimate channel in areas out of trade; because of that, firms always were looking for plan B by appealing and lobbying directly to government officials in other entities outside the scope of the PDD and the NTF.”Footnote ³

The experience of the PPD in the agricultural sector seems to be particularly informative. First, the government held various types of PPD simultaneously for different industries within agriculture. Labor unions, agrarian boards, and firms switched from one initiative to the next, looking for the most effective one. Second, the initiatives often included a broad array of actors that did not have common ground and, thereby, were affected by different types of constraints. While large farmers were mainly focused on the availability of fertile land and skill shortages (difficulties in attracting and retaining qualified labor), small farmers were more concerned about transportation costs, lack of scale, irregular quality of inputs and products, and other logistic issues that prevented them from reaching the shelves of Namibian stores. Finally, the large number of representatives on the different agricultural PPD initiatives organized by the government granted a broad representation of the sector – perhaps too broad – that came at the cost of lower functionality and overall operating efficiency. Eventually, once the trade and market access issues were sorted, the PPD lost relevance and faded away in time.

2.3 Lessons Learned

First, the choice of the entity that convenes and leads the PPD tends to predetermine the type of constraints and roadblocks that surface. In the case of Namibia, the choice of the NTF and the specific mandate issued by the government restricted the policy space to issues associated with international trade and trade regulations, not necessarily because they were the most relevant but rather because participants perceived that was the policy area where the convening entity had the most influence. Finding a convening entity with the authority to mobilize other public officials would contribute to streamlining and consolidating the platform of PPD as the mechanism to identify and address constraints to productivity at the sector level.

Second, there should be a period of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation to tailor the initiative to the specific context of the place before expanding it more broadly. In the case of the PPD launched by MIT from 2012 onwards, the initial plan seems to have been too ambitious, incorporating at least eight different economic sectors in a short period. A more parsimonious process would have entailed choosing a pilot sector, learning from experience, contextualizing the initiative, and expanding to other sectors. That would have also allowed authorities to create momentum around the progress of the pilot PPD, recording some early success that would then increase the incentives of private entrepreneurs in other sectors to demand the constitution of an effective dialog and participate actively.

Third, in structuring PPDs, it is vital to strike the right balance between representation and functionality. The experience of the PPD in agriculture seems to have incorporated a broad arrange of actors – different sizes of farming units, labor unions, agricultural boards, plus several government dependencies including the Ministry of Agriculture and MTI – that enhanced their representativeness, potentially at the cost of lower functionality and efficiency. PPD should be an effective vehicle to promote collective thinking among informed parties on what is constraining productivity at the sector level, analyze the policy space in search of interventions that help alleviate or mitigate the constraints, assign responsibilities, and follow up on execution. The size of the PPD should be broad enough to include relevant parties likely to be affected by the same constraints but small enough to guarantee that the group remains functional from an execution standpoint. Ultimately, the goal is to identify a set of constraints hindering the competitiveness of all firms in the sector and develop effective interventions to address them for the benefit of all firms in the industry and not only those sitting at the PPD.

Finally, it is essential to establish an appropriate periodicity in the meetings of sectoral PPD while also considering the policy and political context. The irregular periods between PPD at the NTF may have mirrored a context were mobilizing resources and implementing policy interventions happen slowly. While it is essential to factor this into the PPD policy design to avoid organizing unnecessary meetings, the fact that periodicity was not established ex ante also created a lot of uncertainty and detracted structure, accountability, and predictability from the policy initiative.

3.1 Building the Team: Political Champions and Policy Officers

The launch of the PTFs as part of a broader effort to diversify the economy was approved by an authorizing environment comprising three institutions within the Namibian government: The Ministry of Finance (represented by the Minister Iipumbu Shiimi), the National Planning Commission (represented by its highest authority, Obeth Kandjoze), and the Central Bank of Namibia (represented by its Deputy Governor, Ebson Uanguta). As part of the approval process, the group had to decide the government entity that would host PTFs and facilitate the dialogs. It was not an easy choice.

While some of the initial candidates proposed were not a good fit from a functional standpoint and were discarded with relative ease (the Ministry of Finance, the National Planning Commission), the Ministry of Industrialization and Trade held a more legitimate aspiration as the precursor of PPDs in Namibia. However, the learnings derived from the previous experience and the authorities’ desire to relaunch these dialogs, increasing their effectiveness and expanding the scope of issues they could potentially tackle, led to an intense discussion that delayed the implementation of PTFs for a few months.

One natural candidate was the Namibian Investment and Development Board (NIPDB). The NIPDB had been created in 2019 as a nonprofit organization incorporated under Section 21 of the Companies Act (28 of 2004). Placed at the Office of the President of Namibia, it was entitled with the mission of attracting foreign direct investment, promoting productive diversification, and spurring the creation of formal jobs in the private sector. To accomplish that purpose, it was key that the entity developed the capacity to perform background research and establish a constructive dialog with private sector of companies present in Namibia (intensive margin) and abroad (extensive margin), to identify and address industry-specific barriers to productivity and competitiveness. There were obvious advantages of the NIPDB over other government entities, and more particularly the Namibian Trade Forum at the Minister of Industrialization and Trade. First, it was a new organization that could recast the PPD effort and frame it within a more relevant context for the development of Namibia. Second, it was registered as an autonomous entity responding directly to the Presidency but was not subject to the limitations of government entities, allowing them to offer better working conditions thereby improving its capacity to attract talent. And third, it had a relatively small, yet flexible, structure. These characteristics made NIDPB the right institution for running the task force because they freed it from other institutions’ bureaucratic hurdles.

Based on these advantages, the three institutions comprising the authorizing environment presented and got approval from Cabinet to appoint the NIPDB as the host of PTFs in Namibia.

The approval from Cabinet and the backing from three institutions with significant leverage within the Namibian government and the overall political establishment was one of the key factors behind the successful launch of the PTFs. To run the dialogs, the NIPDB needed a dedicated team, and the administrative capacity required to organize and lead the meetings, follow-up on specific topics, identify loopholes, and push for solutions.

The authorizing environment helped to source the funding needed to secure those capacities and played a pivotal role in the convening of the PTFs and the mobilization of other public entities to address the issues raised by participants. The presence of one of the key representatives – Minister of Finance, Iipumbu Shiimi – as head of the meetings provided a significant impulse to the launching and conveyed to private sector participants the political support to the effort and its importance for the Government of Namibia.

However, a team comprising solely high-level officials would have the political support to undertake any policy reform but would lack the technical or administrative capacity to identify the right constraints for the sector, design policies to address them, and coordinate the process of change. On the other hand, technical teams might lack decision-making power, thus making it impossible for them to make things happen. At the time, the overall reflection was that the right team should have a mix of both features, that is, senior officials who understand politics (champions) and mid-level and junior officials who can identify policy reforms and coordinate with multiple stakeholders (policy officers).

3.2 Selecting the Initial Sector: High-Value Fruits

During the first half of 2021, the Minister of Finance got approval from the Cabinet to start a pilot of productivity task forces on a sector to be selected. The NIPDB core team started working on the PTF pilot in July 2021. The first discussions about sector selection happened after a few introductory meetings to get the NIPBD team acquainted with the notion of productivity task forces – goals, structuring, steps, methodology – during which the Harvard Growth Lab and NIPDB exchanged ideas on how to approach the project and the best way to contextualize it to Namibia. Once the basics were covered, the team moved to sector selection process, which followed a two-step process: (i) analysis of industries according to their growth potential and feasibility, and (ii) joint selection of a sector based on a combination of quantitatively and qualitative criteria, contextual knowledge, and learning by doing.

3.2.1 Growth Potential and Feasibility: High-Value Fruits versus Other Candidates

The first question was about the role of sector selection within the context of a broader national diversification strategy. There was no need to delay the task force setup until a thorough and research-heavy review of the development and diversification strategies was done. As a pilot, the purpose was to get the initiative started on a sector with significant potential but not politically controversial, allowing experimentation and adaptation to contextualize the process and give PTF firmer ground before expanding to other sectors. However, as mentioned in Section 2, Namibia’s political leadership had reviewed its long-term development strategy and created a certain degree of consensus over the pathways to inclusive and sustainable economic growth. In that context, the government decided to work with Harvard’s Growth Lab in developing ways of addressing the constraints identified in the Growth Diagnostics (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022) and diversifying the economy based on the Economic Complexity Report (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022). Namibia’s low levels of knowledge agglomeration and scarce opportunities for productive diversification implied that working in relatively well-established sectors would yield more realistic returns in the short term than focusing on more complex yet less feasible industries that were part of a longer-term diversification strategy. The PTF started with the high-value fruits sector, which is comprised of low-complexity products near Namibia’s productive capabilities. Figure 1 shows that products comprised within this category – grapes, dates, and berries – were less complex and more feasible than most products recommended in the economic complexity report (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022).

Figure 1

Namibia’s diversification opportunities

Source: International trade data from Atlas of Economic Complexity (2019)

The NIPDB team developed a preliminary list of sectors that could be the focus of the PTF pilot. The list was discussed in a few meetings, but the process of preliminary research and discussion was not long. The priority was to get started and not to develop a comprehensive understanding of the sectors. The options under consideration were:

• A manufacturing industry like the automotive or food industries of beverages, processed meat, and dairy products.

• Cosmetics industry of products like Marula oil

• Fishing industry

• High-value fruits (grapes, dates and berries)

The problem with most manufacturing industries was that they tended to show high levels of market concentration, as highlighted during the initial meetings. However, this was the case for most sectors in Namibia, which is a small economy with a population of only 2.5 million, where most industries have a small number of players that constitute monopolies or small oligopolies with significant market power. This feature led to a discussion on whether the characteristics of the Namibian economy justified an adaptation to the PTF principles to work in sectors with fewer players than previous documented experiences. It would not have been an issue if the PTF had operated at the sector level rather than exclusively for the dominant player. If that were the case, the process would facilitate firm entry by alleviating constraints that currently deter potential investors.

Although market concentration levels were a concern, the main reason for shifting the focus away from manufacturing industries was that the other candidates with significant growth potential were considered more adjacent– within a closer range of Namibia’s existing skillset. Namibia is a country with low know-how agglomeration for which productive diversification would require well-targeted long jumps (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022). Several manufacturing industries considered in the initial list of sectors, like the automotive industry, represented broader skill gaps than other more realistic choices for a PTF pilot. Ultimately, the runners-up showing signs of attractive economic growth potential were cosmetics, fishing, and high-value fruits. The three had comparative advantages in Namibia and were underperforming relative to their potential.

The cosmetics industry, which included a manufacturing component, presented itself as a feasible and attractive candidate. The sector showed good coordination levels as it organized the Namibian Network of the Cosmetics Industry (NANCi). The NIPDB team was already supporting the cosmetics businesses in accessing international markets, as they saw a large potential for them if they managed to tap into global markets and growing international demand. L’Oréal, the largest cosmetics company in the world, had documented a growth rate of 8% in 2021 for the global market, which went well and above a mere recovery from the pandemic and continued in 2022 (6%) and 2023 (8%). The expectation was that the market would continue growing as fast as the expansion of the global middle class and rising demand from Asia (L’Oréal, Reference L’Oréal2023). Some Namibian cosmetics businesses started exporting to European and North American markets, like Taneta Investment, a small business established in 2015 that developed cosmetic oils based on Marula, a fruit indigenous to the Southern African region (US Embassy Windhoek, 2022). In turn, revenues in the South African cosmetics sector have continuously grown in the past decade due to growing domestic demand and investments in local capabilities. In 2016 L’Oréal opened its first Research & Innovation Center in South Africa (InvestSA, 2020). In summary, the economic growth potential of the Namibian cosmetics industry was promising, positioning it as a strong contender for the first PTF.

The main factor against the cosmetics industry was that it comprised primarily small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While this was not necessarily problematic, it did imply a steeper learning curve for achieving economies of scale compared to industries with companies already benefiting from access to capital, markets, and higher operational efficiency. Developing a PTF focused on a sector comprised of SMEs was a possibility. As in the case of highly concentrated markets, the PTF could be tailored to address the specific challenges these businesses face. However, other sectors demonstrated greater economies of scale, making them more attractive for the first pilot: solving productivity problems in these sectors could potentially have higher economic impacts in the short term, which would signal the PTF’s effectiveness as a policy tool and provide momentum to expand the initiative to other sectors.

Of all the candidates initially considered, fishing and high-value fruits were the two candidates with the highest short-term growth potential for the first PTF. In the case of the former, worldwide revenues and the production volume for processed and fresh products have sharply increased since the end of the pandemic (Statista, Reference Statista2024). However, prices for fishing products had also increased between 2021 and 2023, suggesting that the surge in production was lower that of demand (Statista, 2024). For a fishing country like Namibia, the strong signal of a rise in demand for fishing products pointed to significant room to increase its exports.

As the FAO (2023b) reported, Namibia boasts some of the most productive fishing grounds globally. This productivity is primarily attributed to the cold Benguela current, which fosters an exceptionally favorable ecosystem. Fishing is a critical industry in Namibia, consistently contributing around 3% to the nation’s GDP since 2007 (USA ITA, 2024) and accounting for over 10% of total annual exports from 2000 to 2018 (Atlas of Economic Complexity). The exports of fish products in Namibia consistently increased at an annual compounded growth rate of over 3% between the early 2000s and 2013, when they peaked. They stagnated between 2013 and 2019, a period of worldwide slowdown of international export growth. Yet after 2019, the fishing industry experienced a dramatic export collapse: over 35% between 2019 and 2021 (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Namibia’s exports of fish products (2000–2021)

Source: Atlas of Economic Complexity

Namibia’s fish exports declined following a political scandal that surfaced on November 12, 2019, while the discussion to select the pilot sector was at full speed. On that day, WikiLeaks released what came to be known as the Fishrot Files, a trove of thousands of documents and email exchanges from employees of Samherji, one of Iceland’s leading fish industry companies (Dell, Reference Dell2023; Fabricius, Reference Fabricius2022; Henley, Reference Henley2019). These documents revealed that the company had allegedly paid hundreds of millions to senior politicians and officials in Namibia to secure the country’s valuable fishing quotas. The total value of suspicious transactions was estimated at US$ 650 million (IPPR & Transparency International Iceland, 2022). Samherji finalized its operations in Namibia shortly after that. The scandal was a major reputational hit for the Namibian fishing industry, with thousands of fishermen losing their jobs (IPPR & Transparency International Iceland, 2022). Ultimately, the political controversy surrounding Namibia’s fishing industry was a significant drawback for it being considered the first sector for the PTF. Being at the center of public and political attention would not have given the room necessary to experiment and adapt that was necessary to contextualize the initiative to the particularities of Namibia, one of the key goals of the launching of the pilot sector.

At last, the high-value fruits sector was the last one standing in the initial list. It was also a sector with clear growth potential. One way of analyzing the prospects of a sector is to look at whether it has comparative advantages and, at the same time, is underperforming its competitors in other countries. In Peru, for example, the Mesas Ejecutivas started with the forestry sector. This sector had a series of comparative advantages yet was underperforming vis-à-vis other countries (Ghezzi, Reference Ghezzi2017), which suggested the presence of several constraints affecting its competitiveness. In Namibia, the same fundamental reason guided the narrowing down of candidates, which ultimately led to the high-value fruits sector. Along with the meat industry, Namibia’s high-value fruits sector is the most export-oriented industry within the agriculture sector. According to FAO production estimates, table grapes were 70% of fruit production in 2020 in Namibia. Yet grapes, dates, and blueberry production were relatively new in Namibia. Grape growers have constantly increased their exports since they started in 2000, though they have declined since 2014 (Figure 3). On the other hand, date producers started exporting significant amounts of produce in 2014 and had experienced a fourfold increase in exports by 2019 (Figure 4). Blueberry farms are a much more recent phenomenon that started exporting in 2018.

Figure 3

Namibia’s exports of grapes

Source: Atlas of Economic Complexity

Figure 4

Namibia’s exports of dates

Source: Atlas of Economic Complexity

The global demand for grapes, dates, and blueberries had been consistently increasing since the early 2000s – with growing markets in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Namibia was in an excellent position to cater to demand from the North American and European markets. The ports that can be accessed from and in Namibia are closer in distance to Europe than those used in leading countries in the sector, like Peru. The business of high-value fruits is highly sensitive to transportation because the less time it takes, the higher the quality of the product, as freshness is a key factor. Namibia’s lower distance to Europe could be a significant comparative advantage if the country developed a competitive port infrastructure. At the time of the start of the PTF, the high-value fruit producers were utilizing the Port of Cape Town because it was closer to their farms than Walvis Bay (Namibia’s main port). Nevertheless, South Africa’s decline in state capacity has severely affected the performance of the Port of Cape Town, which has been decreasing positions in the global ranking of the Container Port Performance Index developed by the World Bank (Figure 5) to the point of being the worst performing port in the world in 2023 (World Bank, 2024). The inefficiencies in the Port of Cape Town management have resulted in significant losses for the agriculture sector (Meintjes, Reference Meintjes2024). Although Walvis Bay was not a peak performing port, it still ranked better than Cape Town in terms of efficiency and performance. As a result, the Namibian farmers turned to Walvis Bay as an alternative to the Cape Town port (Fresh Plaza, Reference Plaza2024; Meintjes, Reference Meintjes2023).

Figure 5

Container Port Performance Index of Cape Town and Walvis Bay (2020–2023)

Source: World Bank Container Port Performance Index

In addition, being part of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) gave Namibia a competitive edge when exporting to the United States vis-à-vis other non-African exporters of high-value fruits. Namibia had also established commercial relationships with multiple European countries since its independence, and, in 2014, signed an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. However, the country was not in the same position to start exporting to the Asian markets, which was related to productivity constraints –as the PTF later discovered.

One of main factors that could boost Namibia’s fruit exports was that its harvest season does not overlap with that of the Northern Hemisphere. Fruit harvest in Namibia spans from November to January, which offers a strategic advantage as it aligns with the off-season in major grape-producing countries in the Northern Hemisphere, including the United States and Europe. As a result, Namibian grapes can be marketed during high demand and limited supply in these regions, often commanding higher prices.

A series of domestic factors suggested the sector could take advantage of the seasonality advantage. Although access to critical inputs like water and electricity was challenging, the country had a considerable amount of underutilized land that could be allocated to high-value crops. Additionally, Namibia had the potential to compete with South Africa for investments in this sector, given the higher levels of policy uncertainty and state capacity crisis in South Africa that severely affect its investment climate. Lastly, Namibia also has a high level of unemployed working-age population, in particular in rural areas that could be recruited at competitive wages to work in agriculture.

Other factors that made the sector attractive included that Namibia imports most of its fruit consumption and the extensive land available for fruit production. As surveyed by the Namibian Agriculture Board (2023), only 4% of the produce was sourced locally in 2019, and only 17% of the total arable land was under cultivation in 2021. Furthermore, a considerable share of this land is in areas with access to water infrastructure and electricity.

In the context of this first stage, the economic analysis supporting the sector selection was necessary, but there was no need to conduct a comprehensive study of all potential sectors. Baseline desktop research was mean to feed the initial meetings, inform the discussion, and spur the conversation, but the task force itself was meant to act as an information-revelation mechanism on potential and constraints. In selecting the high-value fruits sector, a mix of political (not very sensitive or highly visible from a political standpoint), economic (significant export potential, feasibility from a skill standpoint), and industrial organizational factors (various independent players) weighed more heavily.

Box 1The Duality of Agriculture in Namibia

Since Namibia’s independence in 1990, the country has expanded farmland without significantly increasing yields, while several peer countries have experienced agricultural growth thanks to productivity gains. In the context of the Harvard Growth Lab engagement in Namibia, the research team documented that agricultural activity had grown in the previous two decades, increasing land and water use without any significant improvement in productivity. This broad pattern of land expansion under low productivity is a crucial characteristic of Namibia’s agriculture sector. Another critical characteristic of the sector is its dual nature: productive agriculture in Namibia has thrived in the most arid places, whereas it struggles where water and arable land are more widely available. The sector is defined by a socioeconomic duality between the North and the South that transcends natural conditions.

The northern regions of Namibia are mostly rural yet are also the areas with the highest population density in the country. They have the lowest employment levels, highest poverty rates, and highest food insecurity. They are not on a convergence path with Namibia’s economic growth centers. Most of the population in the North keeps traditional social, legal, and cultural norms, which include ways of doing subsistence agriculture, pastoralism, and food consumption habits. The norms also include a system of communal land in which the local traditional authorities assign land tenure to families or business projects. Additionally, some areas in the North benefit from access to water in a way no other region of Namibia enjoys, both through rainfall and river basins. However, they do not necessarily have the best soil in the broader region – which has high components of sand and clay. Despite having the best conditions for agriculture and the largest working-age population available for work in the country, there are no significant productive agricultural developments in the northern regions. Agriculture in the north is primarily small-scale or subsistence, and the regions remains locked in a Malthusian trap.

On the other hand, commercial agriculture thrives in the South of Namibia. The Southern regions have the lowest population density in the country and a private property system of land tenure. The low population density is a long-term effect of the Herero and Namaqua genocide carried out by the German army in 1904−1908, during the German colonization of Namibia (Melber, Reference Melber2014). Additionally, white Afrikaners have developed extensive farms in the South, whereas they don’t have access to land in the North. Unsurprisingly, most high-value fruit farms (grapes and dates) are in the South.

3.3 Summary of Preliminary Work

The analysis of potential sectors was followed by internal meetings to decide based on the requirements’ checklist. The next step was to conduct a series of interviews to provide a final check on the sector selection and set the basis to kick-start the task force. The team from NIPDB interviewed private and public sector players from relevant areas. These one-on-one interviews were focused on:

• Check the expectations and bandwidth of potential participants. The list of candidates to participate in the task force meetings shall include people with a constructive attitude who would be open and were able to prioritize the discussions on productivity, rather than demanding interventions to boost their profitability – in the case of the private sector – or develop political interests – in the case of the public sector. The interviews were meant to inform on the sector and to screen the right group of agents in the task force.

• Come up with an initial list of constraints. During the preliminary interviews, the NIPDB team inquired about the main constraints – as perceived by participants – to productivity in the sector. This provided an initial set of constraints to feed the discussions at the table during the first meetings. Additionally, the constraints were associated with potential solutions, providing inputs to start identifying agents of change from the public sector that could work on those solutions.

• Have a clear perspective on the task force’s goals. In addition to the broad goals of increasing productivity and value-added, the task force needed specific goals for the sector. These could be related to increasing exports, achieving market diversification, or enhancing competitiveness. Although the NIPDB and Harvard Growth Lab teams thought it was too early and there was not enough information to define a concrete set of goals, this was a requirement from the Government of Namibia when greenlighting the task force, and the preliminary interviews helped develop a narrative about potential goals and impacts.

• Identify relevant participants and gauge their internal cohesion. One key consideration when choosing private sector stakeholders for the task force meetings was that the selection of participants should not be biased or influenced by personal criteria. To the contrary, during the preliminary interviews, the NIPDB team continuously asked whether they should invite other players to the meetings. The team kept the door open during the first few meetings to ensure they achieved the highest level of sector representation in the task force.

• Inputs for the task force’s agenda. The previous points – together with the background research done on each candidate sector during the selection period – were used to inform the first meeting’s agenda, especially the list of constraints. The participants also expected to see their views expressed in the preliminary meetings in the task force agenda. The initial set of constraints were the most critical talking points. Aside from these, the initial meetings were also meant to cover potential policy solutions that the private sector had voiced before in the interview process.

All in all, once there was enough information to decide when and how to kick-start the PTF, the only step left was to convene the different participants. The important thing was to get started and start learning. The goal during the initial research stage and preliminary interviews was not to develop a comprehensive understanding of the sector, but to provide talking points to help the team start quickly and efficiently. Table 1 provides a summary of the set-up process for the Namibian high-value fruits PTF.

Table 1Summary of the setup process of the Namibian productivity task force

Source: Own elaboration

4.1 Market Access

In a small open economy like Namibia, growth can only be promoted by tapping into international demand. Thus, accessing international markets was a critical element of success. In turn, phytosanitary or plant health regulations are crucial to enable market access in industries like high-value fruits. Food and fruit imports have become increasingly regulated to secure health standards. Each country has its own set of phytosanitary rules and certifications that exporters need to comply with to access their market, and many of those can take years to obtain – becoming nontariff barriers to trade.

In addition to that, international standards started to be adopted in the early 1990s.Footnote ⁴ Exporters depend on their national phytosanitary authority to work with their counterparts in other countries, make applications, organize missions, and implement local regulations that meet international standards. The Peru case showcased the importance of SENASA’s role in enabling exports to different markets. From the producers’ perspective, market access was the only difference between Namibia and competitors like Peru.

In the first task force meeting, the producers described Namibia’s plant health agency as more of a barrier to exports than an effective enabler. The plant health authority was having a negative impact on the development of the private sector because of several factors:

• The relationship between the agency and the producers was not constructive. Although they were meant to work together to increase production and health standards, they distrusted each other. The PTF was an opportunity to turn the page and start with a clean slate.

• The agency was underfunded, which resulted in poor service delivery. The state of public capabilities in the agency ultimately had a negative impact on the producers’ capacity to access foreign markets. According to the farmers at the table, South Africa was close to cutting fruit imports from Namibia at different points in time during the 2000s because the plant health regulator did not file monitoring reports for fruit flies.

Ultimately, the agency became a barrier to gaining access to the most strategic market for table grapes: China. The process for implementing the plant health protocols required by China was at a standstill when the PTF started. The producers had exhausted all their resources to work with the agency on this issue. Access to the Chinese market was the most relevant growth opportunity for grape growers and where they needed to collaborate the most with the public sector. Although this was not the priority for other high-value fruit producers (for instance, dates, whose exports were directed mainly to Middle Eastern countries), it would work as a pilot experience for unlocking access to strategic international markets and providing further growth opportunities for all. It was a matter of implementing requirements from China and negotiating the protocols. They believed that if they had a successful negotiation, they could gain a competitive advantage vis-à-vis other exporters like South Africa. The neighboring country had old protocols with China that required the produce to be frozen 72 hours before selling it in the market, so it was important for the Namibian authorities to aim at having protocols that did not include that clause.

However, the level of distrust between the producers and the plant health authorities at the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform (MAWLR) was such that the latter questioned the producers’ capacity to increase production if they effectively gained access to the Chinese market. The PTF meetings were helpful for the public counterpart to understand what accessing China meant for the private sector. At the time, Namibia’s table grapes’ annual production was equivalent to China’s daily consumption. Unlocking the Chinese market would enable producers to grow by orders of magnitude while at the same time strengthening the industry’s technical and productive capabilities in the long term.

Furthermore, African exports of fruits had been increasing for a decade. Figure 6 shows that Europe was one of the leading markets for African fruits: France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and Spain comprised around 40% of fruit exports. The growth in African fruit exports to the Netherlands, led by South Africa (60%), was noteworthy and showed potential to increase and diversify exports from Southern Africa to the European markets – to which Namibia already had access. Figure 6 also shows that several Asian countries presented high-potential opportunities for Africa. China, India, and Vietnam had significantly increased fruit imports from Africa in the previous decade. The growing demand from these markets implied that accessing the Chinese market could be a game changer for the Namibian high-value fruits industry and a stepping stone to access other markets in Asia.

Figure 6

Export destinations of fruit and nuts from Africa (top 9)

Source: Atlas of Economic Complexity

Exports to China were especially important because of the size and dynamics of the Chinese markets. Figure 7 shows that Egypt and South Africa were the main drivers of the African fruit export boom to China. South Africa is a relevant point of comparison for Namibia because of the shared history and multiple similarities. Conversely, Egypt’s climate conditions are quite similar to those of Namibia. Other countries in Southern Africa, like Zimbabwe, managed to enter the Chinese fruit markets – which resulted in a 200% export growth between 2016 and 2020 (Figure 7). In all these cases, the plant health regulator was a critical factor in enabling access.Footnote ⁵

Figure 7

Chinese imports of fruits and nuts from Africa

Source: Atlas of Economic Complexity

During the first PTF meetings, the group agreed that there were two layers of the problem of plant health in Namibia: (a) in the short run, if the government did not prioritize plant health as a policy area, they were not going to gain access to the Chinese market for Namibian table grapes, and (b) in the long-run, they would not help the sector grow if they did not strengthen the capacity of the plant health regulator.

In the short run, the leading solution was to assign a high-level policy team in charge of the issue and use the PTF meetings as a communication channel to report progress. The presence of a high-level officer from MAWLR was vital in moving forward on this front. The MAWLR representative took charge of a process that was at a standstill: Negotiating and implementing the Chinese protocols. He had the administrative capacity and political authority to coordinate with other public agencies, such as the Namibian embassy in China. He took responsibility for the issue and used the meetings to report progress – which was well received by the producers. By February 2023, the Chinese authorities had provided feedback on Namibia’s request. The analysis identified a series of pests that posed a significant risk for China. On the other hand, the Namibian counterparts conducted their own pest risk analysis in collaboration with the grape growers. They confirmed the occurrence of some of the pests identified by China but did not find evidence of others. Additionally, MAWLR authorities had already signed an umbrella agreement with China and were waiting for the signatures from their counterparts. The negotiation process, analyses, and implementation of plant health procedures were specific to grapes but worked as a template for other high-value fruits and agriculture products.

In the long run, MAWLR decided to call for applications to expand the technical team at the plant health regulator. This was a crucial step in acquiring the skills they needed to do a series of tasks necessary for unlocking growth in the sector – mainly regarding compliance with international standards, but also in assisting small and medium producers in improving their sanitary protocols. Doing this while reporting to the task force helped build trust between the private and the public sectors. The plant health division defined the skills they needed in collaboration with the private sector, and the private sector saw an opportunity to participate and actively collaborate in a process that would bring them benefits.

Other issues related to barriers to international market access that were mentioned in the PTF were:

• As mentioned in the previous section, the ports of Namibia were gaining comparative advantage vis-à-vis Cape Town. However, at the time, the concern was that Namibian ports were farther away from the farms than the port of Cape Town, so the farmers had been exporting their produce through the latter. They would have been interested in utilizing the port of Walvis Bay in Namibia. However, the problem was that neither the port nor the producers had the scale required by vessels to stop in Namibia. Additionally, administrative and logistical issues increased the cost of using both the ports of Lüderitz and Walvis Bay vis-a-vis Cape Town. As mentioned before, the problems with the Cape Town Port ended up raising their costs up to the point where producers were urged to develop the Walvis Bay route to remain competitive.

• Paperwork represented a hurdle for exporters, often done in situ in the border posts, resulting in extensive delays. The process needed to be modernized and digitized. This was not a significant issue affecting market access, but it imposed higher costs on the producers.

4.2 Access to Seeds and Plant Variety Protection

In addition to market access, key inputs like seeds were another essential ingredient for the competitiveness of the high-value fruits sector. In today’s agriculture, that means access to modified or improved seeds. Developing seeds and plant varieties is a complex process that requires investment in research and development (R&D), and plant breedersFootnote ⁶ hold intellectual property rights on their varieties. In the absence of regulations, the international trade of plant varieties would threaten the returns of plant breeders and discourage R&D. To ensure plant breeders’ rights at the international level, a group of countries adopted the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants in 1961. The convention and its implementation are administered by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV).Footnote ⁷

Namibia’s approach toward securing access and safeguarding plant varieties had predominantly depended on initiatives at the regional level, which had not produced the expected results. This approach included efforts such as the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization’s (ARIPO) bid to join UPOV (initiated in 2009), the establishment of the Arusha Protocol in 2015 (introducing a regional mechanism for the protection of plant varieties offering a unified legal framework with consistent and explicit principles for its member states), and the development of the Protocol for Protection of New Varieties of Plants in collaboration with eight countries from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) (Fortunato & Enciso-Valdivia, Reference Fortunato and Enciso2023).

However, at the time of the launch of the PTF, Namibia was not part of UPOV, and the farmers faced difficulties accessing international cultivars. Less than 5% of farmers in commercial and communal land areas used improved seeds, and only one of twenty-two regional seed companies (and no global companies) were present in Namibia. The participants in the high-value fruits task force identified this as a critical constraint. They voiced their need to access high-yield and state-of-the-art seed varieties to compete in international markets. It was not only a matter of productivity, but often, it was also a matter of product quality. Some markets demand specific types of crops or produce that require specific seeds. Namibia was not only absent from UPOV but did not have a bill that regulated and protected plant breeders’ rights. This limited the farmers’ ability to import varieties from international companies, which required a legal framework to ensure the recognition of their intellectual property rights.

In 2018, Namibia sanctioned the Seed and Seed Varieties Act, which regulated the registry and certification of seeds in Namibia. Nonetheless, there was still a legal gap in protecting plan breeders’ rights. The Plant Breeders and Farmers’ Rights Bill remained a draft in discussion since 2009. As the public sector officials made clear in the PTF, the government seemed reticent to enact a plant variety protection system mainly because of its potentially harmful effect on small farmers. This concern was based on two ideas: (a) the farmers’ rights to access food could be in contradiction with the breeders’ rights if the former had to pay royalties for the use of seeds; (b) both the country’s sovereignty over its biodiversity and the local traditional knowledge could be threatened by the recognition of international companies’ rights over varieties that might be Indigenous to Namibia.

To solve this critical constraint without hurting small farmers, the task force produced a series of research inputs to help define a path forward. The output was expected to create common ground across stakeholders to accept that becoming a member of UPOV was not in direct contradiction with protecting small farmers’ rights and safeguarding both biodiversity and local traditional knowledge. The main insights from that effort were:

• If Namibia decided to enact a plant variety protection system and join UPOV, the country would also benefit from designing a set of complementary policies to conserve national genetic resources for the use of local farmers and protect farmers’ rights. Kenya, for example, had developed a system in which the protection of domestically bred varieties was a responsibility of public institutions, which facilitated access to new plants for domestic small farmers under privileged conditions (Kimani, Reference Kimani2018). Additionally, the UPOV framework already allowed for exemptions in specific cases, such as using varieties for subsistence farming or noncommercial purposes would be one of them.

• The patenting of cultivars covered a subset of commercial varieties, out of which horticultural products were the most protected (70%), followed by extensive crops like maize or wheat (15%), but did not necessarily include several of the varieties that were used in subsistence or small-scale agriculture (Fortunato & Enciso-Valdivia, Reference Fortunato and Enciso2023).

• The small-scale and subsistence farmers were already producing for domestic markets and self-consumption without needing improved seeds; a plant varieties protection system would not necessarily introduce hurdles to their current production practices. Additionally, it was likely that many of them remained informal as Namibia joined UPOV.

• There was a possibility that implementing a plant variety protection system would have brought positive spillovers for small-scale farmers, as they could access improved seeds that brought more resiliency to climate hardships and higher yields.

• To promote local innovation in plant varieties, the legal framework would have had to be accompanied by public policies and institutions that advanced biotechnology and crop science research. These institutions would work closely with local farmers to provide improved locally developed or imported seeds.Footnote ⁸

These findings helped the task force’s private and public stakeholders agree on a plan for Namibia to join UPOV. The officers from MAWLR restarted the dialog with UPOV authorities to get their feedback on the draft of the Plant Breeders and Farmers’ Rights Bill. Again, the task force worked as a communication channel that benefited the private and public sectors in acquiring valuable information for planning. As far as we know, Namibia initiated the procedure of acceding to the UPOV convention in February 2024, although the prospects of an official ascension are uncertain because of reasons we explain in Section 5.1.Footnote ⁹

4.3 Access to Knowhow and Issues at the Border Control Posts

As an export-oriented activity, producing high-value fruits requires frequent interaction with international agents from different fields. Producers not only engage with buyers from other countries but also with foreign consultants or experts they hire to ensure compliance with international standards. In the case of Namibia, the primary source for both (buyers and experts) is South Africa. South Africa has a competitive agriculture sector – especially in the fruits industry – and is also an attractive market for Namibia in terms of size and proximity. To access the knowledge and expertise required to conquer that opportunity, Namibian producers needed a mechanism to ease the entry of high-skilled immigrants.

Namibia’s regulations for cross-border transit included collecting VAT on foreign vehicles crossing its borders inward. Although individuals could request an exemption or a tax rebate, the process was burdensome, according to the producers in the task force. They would try to bring a foreign buyer or expert by car through the border – even for a two-day meeting – only to find that the person would be retained, paying a tax on their vehicle, and going through time-consuming paperwork. Another possibility would have been to bring foreign knowhow as Namibian residents on a permanent basis, but the process to obtain work visas for highly skilled foreigners was very restrictive and subject to many regulatory hurdles. The stated reason among government officials and politicians alike was that unemployment were already high among young graduates from Namibian universities, and allowing foreign workers into the country would only aggravate it. They tended to perceive foreigners as substitutes, when in fact having the right knowhow available would have probably allowed for the creation of new jobs for Namibians.

4.4 Access to Water

Namibia’s water resources are scarce as it is the most arid country in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate and natural conditions make it challenging for agriculture to thrive. Nonetheless, agricultural activity happens where water is available, even if at a higher cost to farmers. As mentioned earlier, the high-value fruits farmers are located primarily in southern Namibia, where the Orange River represents the most important source of water. In 2013, the Government of Namibia started to work on the project of the Neckartal Dam (a project dating back to German colonial times), which became the most significant water storage facility in Namibia once completed in 2019. The dam was installed in the Fish River, an affluent of the Orange River.

Exploiting water resources from the Orange River basin was a topic of discussion between Namibia and South Africa because the latter was also reliant on water downstream that basin and its capacity would be negatively affected. To unlock the potential of agriculture in southern Namibia, the country had to develop irrigation and water management infrastructure to make the best use of the basin. That involved a negotiation process with South Africa to ensure that easing water access for Namibian farmers upstream the Orange River would not have counterproductive impacts in the neighboring country. The PTF became a communication channel between the government and the farmers about these issues, thus helping move forward and creating awareness of the negotiation process.

4.5 Land Tenure

The northern regions of Namibia have comparatively better conditions for agriculture, but because of the communal land tenure system, there is no market for acquiring or leasing land. The allocation of land is decided by the local and regional authorities, and these are often reticent to work with foreign private sector investors. Additionally, the northern municipalities’ balance sheets depend on the income derived from auctioning the land, distorting prices and distribution. The inflow of agriculture capital to northern Namibia faces the challenge of dealing with the particularities of the land tenure system.

Moreover, the Agricultural Land Act (1995) required that to use the tenure of communal land as collateral for applying for bank loans, the person applying for the credit needed approval from MAWLR. This requirement resulted in bureaucratic hurdles and made it virtually impossible to access credit by using land leases as collaterals in the North. Furthermore, this resulted in barriers to access and credit shortages for small communal farmers looking into acquiring capital to increase productivity. While commercial farmers often secured loans using their land or houses, communal farmers were more inclined to depend on their livestock, third-party support, and other assets as collateral for loan applications (Fortunato & Enciso-Valdivia, Reference Fortunato and Enciso2023).

Before the PTF started, the government was aware of the challenges that the land tenure system presented for developing productive agriculture in northern Namibia. Once again, the task force was instrumental as an information revealing mechanism, whereby government got valuable insights from potential investors interested in developing farms in the north. This was especially relevant in the decision to lease portions of state-owned land to the private sector. In 2008, the government started a Green Schemes Policy aimed at developing irrigation infrastructure in the northern regions of Namibia. These irrigation projects also included extensive portions of land that the government administered through AgriBusDev, a state-owned enterprise dedicated to agriculture.Footnote ¹⁰ More than a decade later, the projects had not managed to become profitable; but rather represented a significant burden for the Namibian public budget and scarce resources were vastly underutilized. This policy failure led the government to abandon the idea that a state-owned enterprise had to lead agricultural development in northern Namibia and opened the way for a policy strategy where the private sector had a pivotal role in developing commercial farms.

4.6 Other Constraints

Often in PPDs, the private sector puts the emphasis on the importance of government subsidies or other types of market interventions to compensate for the lack of competitiveness resulting from other constraints – which they perceive as harder to tackle.

In Namibia’s high-value fruits task force, one of the top-of-mind factors impacting the cost of production was perceived to be electricity. According to producers in the PTF, the share of electricity in total production cost was too high. That was a reasonable hypothesis, considering that Namibia imported over 80% of its electricity from South Africa, which had been experiencing a major electricity crisis for some time. However, neither South Africa’s nor Namibia’s electricity prices were significantly high when compared to the rest of the world (Hausmann et al., Reference Hausmann, Santos and Barrios2022). Additionally, the outages that severely affected South African businesses were not an issue in Namibia, as South African electricity authorities had decided to safeguard electricity exports to Namibia – which were small when contrasted with domestic demand in South Africa.

Regarding taxes and subsidies, the private sector expressed concern that the Namibian Agronomic Board charged a fee for conducting farm food and health inspections. The phytosanitary certificates that resulted from these inspections were required for export, so in the view of the farmers these fees effectively worked as a tax on exports. However, this was a common practice globally. Plant health authorities usually finance themselves through the services they provide.

5.1 Impacts on Government Approach to the Sector and Policy Reforms

The PTF helped build state capacity across government. The exercise of defining specific, actionable problems, brainstorming on potential solutions, and working together on implementation was critical for coordinating and strengthening different public entities that were disconnected from real-world problems of the high-value fruits sector. Paradoxically, these were agencies with decision-making power over critical issues – such as the plant health authority – but did not have any mechanism or direct channel to interact with private sector representatives, identify, and understand their most important hurdles to be competitive. In particular, the MAWLR greatly benefited from improved communication with private sector representatives.

The high-value fruits task force also had broader impacts on the government’s overall narrative and strategy toward the agricultural sector in Namibia. At a time when the government was rethinking its state-led economic development model, the task force facilitated a shift of focus from central planning to providing incentives to enable and expand private sector involvement in agriculture. Previously, the government had assigned a pivotal role in its economic development strategy to state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In agriculture, AgriBusDev was the SOE in charge of the green schemes and public irrigation projects aimed at increasing output and employment. It was an effort to replicate the market mechanism by means of central planning, whereby government provided fertile land and inputs to small farmers, established prices for their produce, agglomerated their output on a public distributor, and imposed the sale of volume and prices toward public entities such as schools and hospitals. As it tends to happen, the exhaustion of public funds eased by the end of the super commodity price cycle had exposed all the drawbacks of the structure, their large fiscal cost, and low contribution to overall output. After several years of policy failures, the government decided to open the green schemes for private sector participation through a system of public bids that was informed by the inputs gathered at the PTF.

The PTF’s impact extended significantly to Namibia’s investment promotion landscape, fostering a more collaborative and solution-oriented approach among public institutions. The Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) leveraged the task force to develop trust and improve its coordination with public and private stakeholders. This facilitated the promotion of Namibia as an open and market-oriented economy, attracting foreign investment and boosting investor confidence. The PTF was showcased as an effort to foster public-private partnerships to highlight Namibia’s commitment to creating a more conducive business environment.

Another signal of success of PTF – at least from the government’s point of view – was NIPDB’s decision to expand the initiative to two additional sectors. First, there was the launch of the PTF for the meat sector in 2022. The industry of bovine animals and derivates (processed, fresh, and frozen meat) was a relatively well-established business in Namibia. The sector was export-oriented; the producers had recently managed to access the US market, and there was strong unsatisfied demand coming from South Africa. Although the economic potential was undeniable, the industry faced several bottlenecks. First, the veterinary cordon fence – also known as the “red line” – prevented cattle ranching on the northern side from exporting because of the foot-and-mouth disease estimated to be prevalent on that area. This was a significant issue because most cattle in Namibia were north of the red line. Second, the prevalence of droughts severely damaged the sector’s ability to develop higher-productivity practices. The main reason was that they had no financial or insurance instruments to hedge or recover from droughts (by developing alternative technologies for animal feed). Lastly, the productivity of most farms was relatively low because they lacked technology to help them increase cattle density and production.

The third task force was launched in 2023 for the film and television industry. It came to be called in the NIPDB the “new sector task force” (NSTF) because – different from high-value fruits and meat – the industry was relatively small in Namibia and did not have established companies that could potentially inform on the most important constraints. It was a rare experiment of launching a task force to learn from private sector stakeholders that have not decided to take upon large investments in Namibia but were rather located elsewhere. There were scattered efforts to produce content, and Namibia had been a location site for international movies such as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” but there was no consistent production of audiovisual content. The NIPDB team invited a series of key players involved in the sector in neighboring country – particularly South Africa – and started developing a plan to inform on the most important constraints, promote the scenic Namibian locations, and attract foreign investment. At the time of writing these efforts were relatively incipient and consequently their influence and impacts are yet to be determined.

Regarding specific constraints discussed at the film and television task force, the only tangible improvement broadly recognized by all producers came in the access to foreign talent. The interactions and the relationship developed at the monthly meetings led the NIPDB to establish a dedicated official responsible from taking the visa requests from producers and securing its processing by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration. The process allowed producers to hire foreign talent as well as to bring consultants from South Africa on two-year work permits, which eased the restriction on talent and increased the knowhow and efficiency of the sector. Access to foreign talent did not come at the expense of jobs for Namibians but rather helped to increase investments and create jobs that would not have been available otherwise. In practice, foreign talent in the high-value fruits sector was complementary to Namibians, not a substitute of local talent.

Coming back to the assessment of the government’s role in the high-value fruits PTF, the main takeaway is that there was no significant progress in solving several of the main constraints as of August 2024. The issues have been discussed, well diagnosed, and in most cases, there were specific government actions outlined and even undertaken to alleviate or solve them. However, the thread had been lost somewhere along the way, due to a mixture of lack of follow-up or political willingness, or the classical lethargy of diplomatic channels.

Regarding Namibian membership in UPOV, no definitive progress was achieved. The MAWLR did start a dialog with UPOV authorities to get their feedback on the draft of the Plant Breeders and Farmers’ Rights Bill but did not follow up on the recommendations. According to the producers at the task force, there was a long process of public consultation throughout 2022 and half of 2023 with small farmers, communities, and stakeholders, about the specific provisions of the legislative changes that needed to be enacted for Namibia to become a member of UPOV. That lengthy round of consultations probably reinforced the concerns of the MAWLR regarding the impact of UPOV provisions on small farmers, and the uncertainty surrounding the impacts of joining in case Namibia becomes a seed producer or takes advantage of indigenous plant varieties. The issue remained in the agenda from the inception of the PTF in December 2021 until August 2023. From then onward, there were no further updates or progress reported and the issue dropped from the discussion.

At the time of writing, no progress has been recorded either regarding access to the Chinese market. As a result of the discussions at the PTF, the Government of Namibia worked on all the necessary requests through diplomatic channels and initiated the protocols required. Chinese authorities had developed a particular protocol with South Africa – different from the one Namibia had signed with the European Union and the United Kingdom, where most of the Namibian exports of grapes and berries go – and demanded similar requirements from Namibia.

Some producers at the task force explained that China had identified six pests that needed to be monitored, which are included neither in European nor in UK protocols. For these six pests they demand a period of monitoring and reporting going from six to twelve months. According to them, the Namibian government does not have the equipment or the scientists required to analyze the pests and comply with the process. Private sector stakeholders even offered to buy the equipment in exchange for Namibia hiring the necessary talent at the plant health regulator, but the proposal did not move forward (to the extent of our knowledge). Others argued that the diplomatic process required to open the Chinese market was extremely lengthy and cumbersome, and it was hard to track the exact status of the request across the different administrative levels on both governments. The NIPDB did not have the capacity to monitor progress across the different public entities involved – let alone across the Chinese ones. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that no definitive progress had been made on access to the Chinese market at the time of writing and that probably led the grape farmers to abandon the PTF toward the end of 2023.

5.2 Impacts on Specific Indicators of Economic Performance in the Sector

The high-value fruits sector in Namibia recorded significant growth both before and after the inception of the PTF in December 2021. Figure 8 illustrates this trend through the harvested area of grape and date farms (left) and gross exports of grapes (right). Between 2018 and 2022, grape farms registered an increase of two thousand hectares or 28% in harvested area. In addition to that, grape farms had a robust export performance: Gross exports increased by 40% between 2020 and 2022. Similarly, the harvested area for dates – although at a much lower scale – more than tripled between 2017 and 2022. The expansion indicates a substantial investment in date farming, driven by growing demand and favorable market conditions. These trends in both harvested areas and export volumes underscore the dynamic nature of Namibia’s high-value fruits sector. The expansion of harvested areas suggests that farmers are optimistic about prospects for the industry in Namibia, respond to market signals and have invested in increasing production capacity to meet rising demand.

Figure 8

Harvested area of grapes and dates in 2010–2022 (left) and exports of grapes in 2020–2023 (right)

Sources: Harvested area from FAOSTAT and exports from UN COMTRADE

It is still too early to attempt a formal policy evaluation of the PTF that could help pin down the specific economic impacts on the high-value fruits industry in Namibia. However, the sector’s upward trend continued after the PTF stated, as seen in Figure 8 (right). In 2023, gross exports of grapes increased by 21% versus the previous year. This is not an outcome of the PTF. All we can say is that the initiative worked on issues in a sector that was already growing and continued growing during the PTF.

Two large investment announcements in the sector were made in 2023. First, two high-value fruit farms were among the four top fastest-growing companies in Namibia, according to Africa’s Fastest Growing Companies Report 2023 (Financial Times & Statista, 2023). Due to outstanding profitability, these companies were investing in expanding their farms during 2023 (Amukeshe, Reference Amukeshe2023). Second, a company focused on the production of blueberries (Namibia Berries) announced a US$80 million investment over seven years to establish a 250-hectare farm in the Kavango East region under the communal land system. The project aimed to employ 800 staff and create around 7,000 jobs during harvest season, with the potential of having a large and significant impact on a region characterized by very low employment-to-population ratio and poverty. The two main investors are two large Spanish agri-food companies. The project was expected to export its first harvest in September 2024 (Food Business Africa, 2023).

The development of greenfield investments in the high-value fruits sector during 2023 cannot be attributed to the existence of the PTF. However, it does reflect improved relationships with government officials and a more friendly business environment, to which the PTF likely contributed. The PTF’s focus on export-oriented facilitation through identifying and addressing the constraints identified previously has created good conditions for farmers to continue increasing their exports. Although the sector was already on a rising trend when the PTF was launched, coordination efforts to help the sector grow and the overall government openness towards private sector development created momentum that may have contributed to the continued increase of the sector’s market valuation.

5.3 In Hindsight: Reflections from Private Sector Stakeholders in the PTF

Two and a half years after the inception of the high-value fruits PTF, we went back to interview a group of producers who had participated or continued participating in the meetings. The PTF met monthly for two full years (2022 and 2023), and by the beginning of 2024 had started to meet every two months. As mentioned earlier, grape farmers had decided to abandon the meetings as they perceived no progress beyond working visas for high-skill workers.

There is broad consensus that the launch of the policy initiative started off well, with high senior officials signaling their willingness to improve business conditions in the sector and most relevant agencies represented at the table. The initiative was met with a lot of enthusiasm from a group of farmers that did not have a forum to regularly meet government officials with decision making power over policy areas that were crucial to the sector. “We thought and everyone thought: This is going to move forward, they are willing to make an effort, and we are going play our part, not only to improve our business but also to make Namibia better.”

Policy issues were discussed and identified, and the NIPDB fed the discussions with empirical evidence to support the identification of a set of actionable and relevant constraints. Throughout the meetings, issues were heard, discussed, and understood, but from then onwards – except for work permits for foreign talent – the government was unable to make progress. “When it came to actions to be taken, we seemed to have lost our way, issues fell on a limbo, there were too many government agencies involved in their resolution and did not always coordinated actions or even talked among them.” The fact remains that it is hard to make progress if public–public coordination – coordination across agencies and sometimes between different levels of the public administration: national, federal, municipal – is not working well.

One factor contributing to the slowdown and loss of momentum of the PTF seems to be the lack of continuity of key government representatives at the task force. The Minister of Finance and Public Enterprises, Iipumbu Shiimi, chaired the meetings for a little more than a year – from launching in December 2021 until the beginning of 2023 – but then stopped attending. Margaret Matengu, Deputy Director and Head of Plant Health at the ministry, passed away in December 2023. According to various private sector stakeholders, Mrs. Matengu had both the will and the contacts within the administration necessary to push forward the process of opening the Chinese market. The transition to a new official was slow and did not leverage on the progress made and the knowhow that had been accumulated and the whole process faded away. Another high-level official at the MAWLR, Director General Penda Ithindi, attended the task force meetings throughout most of 2022 but in 2023 was reassigned to the Minister of Finance and replaced by a lower-ranking official. The withdrawal of high-level public officials caused the initiative to lose traction: “Task forces are very valuable as a communication channel, and as a tool to identify problems, but they don’t have the teeth or political authorization to make things work anymore.”

Given the lack of progress, it seems odd that the high-value fruits PTF continues to meet two and a half years later – even if at a lower frequency. Part of the reason seems to be that in a country coming out of apartheid where a significant degree of distrust remains between white farmers and black government officials, there are not many instances where these parties meet and have a chance to discuss issues of mutual interest. “An instance of interaction with government is still very valuable, even if the problems brought up are not sorted or dealt with: This is the only instance where we meet.” The task force meetings have filled a vacuum, providing a space that participants consider valuable even in the absence of tangible and effective solutions. There seems to be an easing in preexisting distrust, as most producers at the task force recognize the willingness and honesty of the public servants they have interacted with.

6.1 How to Identify Productivity Constraints?

Developing an effective process for problem identification is essential. Evidence shows that problem identification is crucial to “effective state capability building” (Andrews, Reference Andrews2013; Andrews et al., Reference Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock2017). Identifying specific, relevant, and impactful problems in the context of productivity task forces is far from straightforward but is the first step forward. Often, policymakers try to come up with solutions without adequately considering the specific problems they have in front of them. The following is a set of criteria to help identify problems practically and productively. This is not an exhaustive or conclusive set; further iterations should help refine it.

6.1.4 Problem Deconstruction

A problem should be decomposed into practical questions and actionable items to make it manageable (Andrews et al., Reference Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock2017). The ideas presented in this section aim to be guidelines for problem deconstruction. It is crucial that the task force thinks about problems that are as binding as possible, that are productivity-oriented, of either supply or demand. However, other considerations are essential for identifying manageable problems. Andrews et al. (Reference Andrews, Pritchett and Woolcock2017) provide a comprehensive toolkit for this type of endeavor. The Problem-Driven Iterative Approach (PDIA) they developed relies heavily on the capacity of policymakers to define manageable problems. Some of the topics they suggest should be part of the deconstruction process are helpful in the context of productivity task forces:

• Why does the problem matter, and to whom? The relevance of the problem should be thought in terms of its impact. Is it a problem for only a subset of the high-value fruit producers, or does it affect all of them and even other farmers? Would a solution help unlock growth in a broad sector, or will it only affect a particular group of firms?

• What does it mean to make progress in solving the problem? Is it something that requires two months, a year, or five years? Is everyone who is needed to solve the problem on board with the action plan? Are the different stakeholders aware of the progress being made?

• What are the root causes of the problem? If a task force for the forestry sector decides that the biggest problem is the lack of financial instruments, what are the reasons behind this? Are macroeconomic factors affecting the sector, or have banks not developed instruments that would respond to the industry’s specific needs?

Table 2 provides a summary of the key concepts involved in defining productivity constraints along with examples from Namibia.

Table 2Defining productivity constraints

Source: Own elaboration

6.2 How to Identify Policy Solutions?

Once the working group identifies a set of specific problems or constraints, the next step is to find solutions to alleviate or sort them. Much like defining the problems, the discovery and implementation of solutions require “high-bandwidth” policymaking (Hausmann, Reference Hausmann2008). The composition of the task force would be diverse enough to act as an information-revealing mechanism, whereby the government and the private sector identify the right problems, brainstorm on their causes and potential solutions, design a plan, and follow through implementation. In the process, each party brings to the table information that is relevant to the mutual interests, but the other party would not have been able to gather on its own. Rather than generating static reports and plans, the focus is on problem-driven solution implementation. The following considerations, drawn from the Namibia case, aim to guide this “high-bandwidth” solution-finding process.

6.2.4 Experimental Approach

Finally, the adoption of an experimental approach is of great help to find and implement solutions. The critical idea is that prioritizing master plans, policy reports, or research-heavy engagements makes the public–private collaboration slow, expensive, and risk-averse. If the public sector officials must wait until having a comprehensive analytical view of the problems, then the policy process would necessarily slow down to a point of inertia. In turn, extensive reports and master plans tend to be too expensive for the knowledge needed to do industrial policy at the sector level. Additionally, research-oriented working groups tend to stay close to evidence when it comes to making decisions about policy interventions. This might result in high levels of risk aversion, given that knowledge and resources are limited. While research reports can provide comprehensive information about a problem, they do not necessarily yield actionable solutions. Moreover, they may not be responsive enough to productivity task forces’ fast-paced and dynamic nature.

Although technical capacity is critical, it should not dominate the decision-making process. As discussed in Section 3, the high-value fruits productivity task force significantly benefited from research contributions and policy memos. These resources allowed participants to comprehend the potential scale within the sector and supplied comparative analysis through the lens of international cases. Moreover, these inputs spurred valuable analyses that contributed to a deeper understanding of the productivity problems and suggested possible policy interventions.

An experimental approach encourages a culture of learning by doing. It involves testing ideas, gathering feedback, analyzing results, and iterating on solutions. This process is more agile and responsive to changes in the industry environment. The solution discovery and implementation processes are not always straightforward and require a learning-by-doing approach. The iterative nature of the solution-finding process is crucial for avoiding impractical interventions, building mechanisms of trust amongst the stakeholders, and developing resistance to failure. The working group needs to be able to go back to its definitions and question them, adapt to a changing environment, and be flexible enough to coordinate multiple agendas. This ensures that solutions are effective and align with the task force’s overarching objectives. It also allows for a more robust and nuanced understanding of the problems, as solutions are tested and adjusted in real-world contexts rather than being developed in the abstract.

Table 3 provides a summary of the key concepts involved in defining solutions for productivity constraints along with examples from Namibia.

Table 3Defining solutions

Source: Own elaboration