Local content will not fail for lack of a policy title. It will fail if nobody who answers to Parliament holds the pen when the contracts begin.
Cabinet approved the National Upstream Petroleum Local Content Policy on 4 August 2026. Cabinet spokesperson Emma Theofelus announced the approval. The Namibian later reported that the Presidency has appointed the Upstream Petroleum Unit as the local content regulator. The unit is headed by Kornelia Shilunga. According to the policy, Section 7.1 tasks the UPU with coordinating, implementing, monitoring and enforcing local content requirements, including compliance, reporting and regulatory oversight.
That is a sharp change from the March 2025 draft. That earlier version gave those same powers to the Ministry of Industrialisation, Mines and Energy. The March draft also promised that the ministry would establish an autonomous industry regulatory authority to take over the Local Content Division. The new draft removes that division from the same framing. Its establishment still appears as an action-plan outcome. Paper promises are not the same as a living regulator.
There is a harder problem. The UPU was established by the petroleum amendment bill, which has not yet passed Parliament. So we have a policy approved, a unit named as regulator, and a legal foundation that remains incomplete. Parliamentarians have already raised concerns about transferring powers from the energy ministry to the Presidency. The concern is not abstract. It is about whether the House can still ask hard questions about a national resource.
Graham Hopwood of the Institute for Public Policy Research put it plainly. Transparency depends on accountability mechanisms. One example he gave was a minister responsible for petroleum affairs who can report to Parliament. Marius Kudumo warned that settling who regulates local content is premature while petroleum-in-the-Presidency remains unsettled. He said operational matters put that office in the firing line. Both points matter before first oil contracts lock in.I speak as Shadow Minister of International Relations and Trade. Trade and investment partners will ask who enforces local content, on what legal footing, and under what oversight.
Investors can live with firm rules. They cannot live with a gap between a policy document and a regulator that Parliament cannot scrutinise.
Namibia needs local content with teeth. Teeth require a clear statute, a clear reporting line, and a clear path for parliamentary scrutiny. Until the bill is passed and the accountability question is settled, the regulator remains on uncertain ground.
A regulator that cannot answer Parliament is not a regulator.
*Rodney Omes Hatani Cloete is an IPC Member of Namibia’s National Assembly and Shadow Minister of International Relations and Trade.
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