This isn't a call to end public procurement, it's a call to rebalance the process. Namibia needs both:
- Tenders for major projects requiring specialised expertise, and
- Insourcing for day-to-day work where our own people can grow, learn and lead.
Every few years, a new contractor, a new team, and a new promise.
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That's the reality of our public procurement system.
It delivers infrastructure but rarely builds the human capacity behind it.
Tender treadmill
With each tender, workers come and go.
Skills gained on one project are lost on the next because the next job is carried out by a different company with a different crew.
Institutional experience resets with every contract. As a result, the workforce never matures.
The public procurement system also breeds other vulnerabilities to corruption for politicians, board members, chief executives, executive directors and other actors in various government institutions.
Ironically, if skills, education and experience were truly valued and embedded within organisations, leadership positions such as a chief executive officer would be taken up freely and confidently, without fear, because the system itself would be clean and self-sustaining.
Imagine: No corruption-related killing of professionals, no commissions of inquiry as we see in the regions.
We've accepted this tender treadmill for too long, as if it were the only way forward.
Maybe it's time to ask: what if we started thinking differently?
THE CASE FOR INSOURCING
Some of the most efficient public systems in Africa succeed not by outsourcing everything but by building strong internal capacity.
Take Burkina Faso's National Office for Water and Sanitation (Onea).
Over two decades, Onea became one of Africa's best-performing utilities not because it tendered out every project but because it retained and grew its own technical teams.
The staff had job stability, institutional memory was preserved, and service quality improved dramatically.
Between 2001 and 2007, water production in Ouagadougou tripled from 40 800m³ to 122 000m³ per day.
Access rose from 57% to 73%, with 24-hour supply in most areas.
That kind of progress doesn't come from starting over every few years, it comes from building on yesterday's work by investing in your own people.
Even here in Namibia, older employees at institutions like the City of Windhoek, TransNamib and NamWater will tell you: many tasks now outsourced were once done in-house, by skilled teams.
THE MORASS OF CORRUPTION
Namibia has the talent. Our artisans, builders, painters, tilers, engineers and planners, among others, are highly capable.
Yet our systems prevent them from establishing lasting roots.
The tender cycle fragments experience, dilutes accountability, and disperses skills across temporary contracts.
Meanwhile, corruption thrives in this complexity.
Imagine a system where ministries, municipalities, and state-owned enterprises develop strong internal technical teams, empowered to deliver, maintain and innovate.
Envision public servants who stay long enough to master their craft.
Think of a generation of workers with steady payslips, mortgages and true stability, freed from the informal economy.
Picture a Namibia where public servants are protected from corruption, where our remarkable men and women are not subjected to imprisonment, dragged before commissions of inquiry or, worst of all, assassinated.
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That is what real empowerment looks like.
Courage is key
Moving away from over-reliance on tenders won't be easy.
It challenges vested interests and demands new thinking around accountability and performance.
But if we want lasting infrastructure, honest governance and an empowered workforce, we must start somewhere.
Institutions must have the courage to insource where it makes sense, to grow their own people, protect institutional memory, and to build capacity that outlives any contract.
Public procurement may build projects, but insourcing builds nations.
- Ralph !Gaoseb, PrEng, is passionate about the development of Namibia. This article is written solely in his personal capacity.
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