Namibia's skills paradox
Why are we importing talent the Global North is training for itself?
When we examine recent international peer-reviewed articles, a striking pattern emerges. The global skills shortage in oil and gas, and the rapidly expanding green hydrogen sector is not isolated to Namibia.
These shortages are deeply felt in developed economies too. In fact, despite their resources and industrial advantage, leading economies in the Global North are urgently up-skilling their own citizens to meet this gap.
This begs the question: why is Namibia constantly told to import these very same skills from abroad, instead of investing in its own human capital?
The Financial Times underscores this point vividly in a February 2025 article by Jodie Kirshner.
Kirshner writes that despite renewed industrial policies like Trump’s tariffs and Biden’s Chips Act, America’s efforts to grow its clean energy workforce are faltering because of an absence of trained workers.
Kirshner writes, “The country risks a pyrrhic victory in creating jobs without creating the workers needed to fill them.”
Similarly, across the Atlantic, Europe faces a comparable crisis.
A January 2025 policy analysis titled “The Green Skills Gap in Europe: A Critical Challenge for Sustainability” published by the Centre for Sustainability and Economics (CSE) warns that the demand for green skills is outpacing supply at an alarming rate.
Between 2023 and 2024, green job demand grew by 11.6% in Europe, but green talent supply rose by only 5.6%.
The report forecasts that unless immediate action is taken, the green skills gap could exceed 100% by 2050.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 outlines significant changes in the global job market projected between 2025 and 2030.
Notably, the current public narrative shows a strong preference for technical and specialist roles, often overshadowing the crucial importance of social, educational, and care professions.
However, the WEF report tells a different story, revealing that job growth and decline across various sectors are shaped by multiple factors.
The WEF report says that between 2025 and 2030, jobs like farmworkers, delivery drivers, construction workers, salespersons, food processing workers, nursing professionals, social workers, personal care aides, university and secondary education teachers, software developers, general managers, and project managers will grow.
Meanwhile, Namibia, as a growing player in emerging sectors such as green hydrogen, faces these global trends firsthand.
While technical expertise is critical, the country’s development will also rely on investing in educational, social, and care professions to build a resilient workforce adapted to both technological and social change.
The question is no longer whether there is a skills gap, but how fast each country can build its own pipeline of skilled workers.
In Namibia, however, the narrative remains different.
Namibia’s emphasis on vocational training while addressing certain skill gaps does not fully resolve the challenge of unemployed graduate engineers and other highly qualified professionals.
According to Annex 5: Numbers of Namibian TVET Level 3 Graduates from 2018 to 2023, over the past six years, more than 4 000 Level 3 TVET graduates have been produced across various skilled trades.
The focus on practical skills is evident in high graduate numbers in key areas like Electrical General, Plumbing, and Bricklaying and Plastering.
This study was published in August 2023 by the International PtX Hub under the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), acting on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
Trades such as Welding, Boiler Making, Joinery, and Air Conditioning also show steady output, reflecting Namibia’s focus on technical training.
Additionally, the country’s education system has historically focused more on theoretical knowledge, leading to a mismatch between the skills acquired and those demanded by the job market.
A wide read concludes that neither Namibia nor its partner countries currently possess the skills base to fully realize the green hydrogen opportunity.
However, unlike other countries, Namibia’s main focus is vocational training, aiming towards semi-skilled and artisan jobs instead of high-skill training programmes for green hydrogen (engineer-level and beyond).
Namibia is not alone in facing a shortage of technical skills in green hydrogen, oil, and gas.
But unlike other countries, we continue to act as though importing talent is a sufficient solution.
This is not only unsustainable it is economically shortsighted.
As global competition for technical talent intensifies, countries that fail to build their own skilled workforces will be left behind.
Namibia must choose a different path: one that prioritizes its own people, builds capacity, and embraces upskilling not as a distant dream, but as an immediate national priority.
This is a clarion calls echoed by the Economic Association of Namibia (EAN) Quarterly Review of May 2025, stating that Namibia must develop a national employment-intensive growth strategy, prioritizing labour-absorbing sectors like agriculture, construction, and manufacturing.
The EAN points out that this includes extending subsidies or tax incentives to firms hiring unskilled or semi-skilled workers, especially in underdeveloped regions.
“Without deliberate policies to link economic growth with job creation, Namibia’s unemployment crisis will persist, undermining social stability and long-term development.”
EAN adds that, Namibia must tighten oversight of large-scale capital projects, including those in oil and gas, by enforcing local content policies, ensuring domestic service providers and workers benefit from the billions being invested in exploration and extraction.