Beyond East and West: What Namibia gets wrong about great power competition
There is a debate happening in Namibia that belongs to another era.
Listen to our political discourse, and you would think we are still in 1985.
The West wants to exploit us; the East offers solidarity.
Pick your side, wave the right flag. The liberation struggle continues by other means.
This framing is costing us. While we debate which great power deserves our loyalty, countries that abandoned ideology for strategy are securing better terms from everyone.
Rwanda engages Washington, Beijing, Brussels and the Gulf simultaneously.
President Paul Kagame has said directly that Rwanda will not be bullied into choosing between the United States of America (USA) and China. The result is that every partner knows Rwanda has alternatives, and every partner adjusts their offer accordingly.
Meanwhile, players we barely discuss in Namibia are reshaping Africa's economic landscape – countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. These are not Cold War actors, they do not fit our East versus West framework, and they are already deeply invested in Namibia.
Here is a truth that our political discourse rarely acknowledges. China wants our resources, Russia wants our influence, the United States wants our minerals, India wants our markets and the Gulf states want our oil.
None of these powers are coming to Namibia out of friendship or solidarity. They are coming because we have what they need. This is simply how the world works.
The question is not which power is more virtuous or which has better intentions. The question is how Namibia positions itself to benefit from the fact that everyone wants what we have. We should engage all of them. We should extract maximum value from every partnership.
And we should never lock ourselves into a box where we declare that this is who we side with and close ourselves off from better deals elsewhere. This is pragmatism; it is exactly what successful countries do.
Buffet of potential
Every major power engaging with Africa has a strategy and a set of tools. Namibians need to understand these clearly.
The United States offers AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides preferential market access for African exports.
Washington has also launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, pledging to mobilise US$600 billion by 2027.
China operates through the Belt and Road Initiative, which has deployed over US$1.3 trillion since 2013.
Africa received the largest share of Chinese construction contracts in 2025. In Namibia specifically, China accounts for roughly 30 percent of our foreign direct investment. The China National Nuclear Corporation controls the Husab and Rossing uranium mines in Namibia.
The European Union has responded with Global Gateway, committing €300 billion by 2027 across energy, transport, digital and health sectors. Germany has designated our US$10 billion Hyphen green hydrogen project as a strategic foreign project. Russia engages primarily through security partnerships and nuclear energy.
The Wagner Group, now operating as Africa Corps, provides military services in several African countries.
Rosatom offers nuclear power plants with associated financing arrangements.
India is expanding its African footprint through private sector players. The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, announced at the 2023 G20 summit, proposes new trade routes linking Indian ports with the Gulf and Europe. India represents an underleveraged relationship for Namibia.
New opportunities
What we are not debating about are the new players that fit neither category: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
They have money, they want returns, and they do not care which bloc we supposedly belong to. But make no mistake, they want exactly what the Big Five want.
Access to African resources, markets and influence. The difference is packaging, not intent. No military bases or ideological lectures, just capital seeking opportunities. The fact that they arrive without the baggage of colonialism or Cold War history does not make them partners in our development. It makes them easier to underestimate, and that may be detrimental to us.
Most Namibians do not know that Qatar has become the single largest contributor to our offshore oil exploration, with over US$3 billion committed across five blocks in the Orange Basin.
They do not know that the same Qatari interests bought the former Safari Hotel, now Mövenpick, through their development arm.
Qatar is already embedded in our economy – we just have not noticed. These players are already here and our foreign policy discourse has not caught up.
Non-alignment
The world has changed, so why does Namibia still frame foreign policy in Cold War terms?
The answer lies in history. Swapo was supported by the Soviet Union, Cuba and the frontline states during the liberation struggle. Western powers, particularly the United States and Britain, maintained relationships with apartheid South Africa. These experiences shaped an entire generation of leaders. Those memories are real and legitimate. But 35 years have passed since independence.
The majority of Namibians alive today were born after 1990.
The Soviet Union no longer exists.
When Namibia's foreign policy reflexively favours certain powers based on liberation-era relationships, or views other powers with suspicion for the same historical reasons, or fails to notice entirely that Qatar has become our largest offshore exploration partner because Gulf states do not fit the East versus West frame, something has gone wrong.
What I am proposing is not a departure from Namibian values but a return to them. Article 96 of our Constitution states: “Namibia shall adopt and maintain a policy of non-alignment.” Not alignment with the East or alignment with the West, but non-alignment.
The Non-Aligned Movement emerged from the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where leaders of newly independent Asian and African nations declared that they would not become pawns in the Cold War contest between Washington and Moscow. Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno and Nkrumah had just led their nations out of colonialism. They had no intention of trading European masters for superpower patrons.
The drafters of our Constitution understood that a small country with valuable resources needed strategic flexibility. They wanted Namibia to stand above global conflicts precisely because we needed to engage with all states and institutions in the world. Article 96 also requires Namibia to create and maintain just and mutually beneficial relations among nations.
The 2004 White Paper on Foreign Policy elaborates that national interests constitute an overriding factor in our bilateral relations. The Constitution does not ask who supported us in 1988. It asks what serves Namibia today. Swapo's historical alignments were appropriate for a liberation movement. But Namibia is no longer a liberation movement. Namibia is a sovereign state, governed by a constitution, not by party history.
Welfare of all Namibians
The party wrote Article 96 and thus should honour it.
What does it mean to be pragmatic in foreign policy? It means evaluating every relationship, every deal, every partnership based on what it delivers for Namibia rather than on ideology or historical sentiment. A pragmatic foreign policy does not ask whether a country supported us during the liberation struggle. It asks whether a partnership creates jobs for Namibians today.
It does not ask whether a power is capitalist or communist, Western or Eastern.
It asks whether the terms of a deal leave us better off than we were before.
Pragmatism is not about abandoning principles. It is about recognising that the highest principle of any sovereign state is the welfare of its own people. When a country locks itself into one camp based on historical loyalty and refuses to engage others on their merits, that country is not being principled.
It is being sentimental at its own expense.
Namibians deserve leaders who ask what works rather than who were our friends in 1988.
They deserve a country that negotiates from strength rather than from ideological reflex.
The question is whether we leverage our assets for our benefit or allow historical sentiments to dictate terms that serve others more than ourselves. The Constitution provides our guide. National interests first, mutually beneficial relationships and genuine non-alignment.
That is the Namibia I want to help build.
*Rodney Cloete is a member of parliament, chief whip and shadow minister of international relations and trade for the Independent Patriots for Change. He represents Namibia on the Pan-African Parliament's Committee on Trade, Customs and Immigration.
Listen to our political discourse, and you would think we are still in 1985.
The West wants to exploit us; the East offers solidarity.
Pick your side, wave the right flag. The liberation struggle continues by other means.
This framing is costing us. While we debate which great power deserves our loyalty, countries that abandoned ideology for strategy are securing better terms from everyone.
Rwanda engages Washington, Beijing, Brussels and the Gulf simultaneously.
President Paul Kagame has said directly that Rwanda will not be bullied into choosing between the United States of America (USA) and China. The result is that every partner knows Rwanda has alternatives, and every partner adjusts their offer accordingly.
Meanwhile, players we barely discuss in Namibia are reshaping Africa's economic landscape – countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. These are not Cold War actors, they do not fit our East versus West framework, and they are already deeply invested in Namibia.
Here is a truth that our political discourse rarely acknowledges. China wants our resources, Russia wants our influence, the United States wants our minerals, India wants our markets and the Gulf states want our oil.
None of these powers are coming to Namibia out of friendship or solidarity. They are coming because we have what they need. This is simply how the world works.
The question is not which power is more virtuous or which has better intentions. The question is how Namibia positions itself to benefit from the fact that everyone wants what we have. We should engage all of them. We should extract maximum value from every partnership.
And we should never lock ourselves into a box where we declare that this is who we side with and close ourselves off from better deals elsewhere. This is pragmatism; it is exactly what successful countries do.
Buffet of potential
Every major power engaging with Africa has a strategy and a set of tools. Namibians need to understand these clearly.
The United States offers AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides preferential market access for African exports.
Washington has also launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, pledging to mobilise US$600 billion by 2027.
China operates through the Belt and Road Initiative, which has deployed over US$1.3 trillion since 2013.
Africa received the largest share of Chinese construction contracts in 2025. In Namibia specifically, China accounts for roughly 30 percent of our foreign direct investment. The China National Nuclear Corporation controls the Husab and Rossing uranium mines in Namibia.
The European Union has responded with Global Gateway, committing €300 billion by 2027 across energy, transport, digital and health sectors. Germany has designated our US$10 billion Hyphen green hydrogen project as a strategic foreign project. Russia engages primarily through security partnerships and nuclear energy.
The Wagner Group, now operating as Africa Corps, provides military services in several African countries.
Rosatom offers nuclear power plants with associated financing arrangements.
India is expanding its African footprint through private sector players. The India-Middle East-Europe Corridor, announced at the 2023 G20 summit, proposes new trade routes linking Indian ports with the Gulf and Europe. India represents an underleveraged relationship for Namibia.
New opportunities
What we are not debating about are the new players that fit neither category: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
They have money, they want returns, and they do not care which bloc we supposedly belong to. But make no mistake, they want exactly what the Big Five want.
Access to African resources, markets and influence. The difference is packaging, not intent. No military bases or ideological lectures, just capital seeking opportunities. The fact that they arrive without the baggage of colonialism or Cold War history does not make them partners in our development. It makes them easier to underestimate, and that may be detrimental to us.
Most Namibians do not know that Qatar has become the single largest contributor to our offshore oil exploration, with over US$3 billion committed across five blocks in the Orange Basin.
They do not know that the same Qatari interests bought the former Safari Hotel, now Mövenpick, through their development arm.
Qatar is already embedded in our economy – we just have not noticed. These players are already here and our foreign policy discourse has not caught up.
Non-alignment
The world has changed, so why does Namibia still frame foreign policy in Cold War terms?
The answer lies in history. Swapo was supported by the Soviet Union, Cuba and the frontline states during the liberation struggle. Western powers, particularly the United States and Britain, maintained relationships with apartheid South Africa. These experiences shaped an entire generation of leaders. Those memories are real and legitimate. But 35 years have passed since independence.
The majority of Namibians alive today were born after 1990.
The Soviet Union no longer exists.
When Namibia's foreign policy reflexively favours certain powers based on liberation-era relationships, or views other powers with suspicion for the same historical reasons, or fails to notice entirely that Qatar has become our largest offshore exploration partner because Gulf states do not fit the East versus West frame, something has gone wrong.
What I am proposing is not a departure from Namibian values but a return to them. Article 96 of our Constitution states: “Namibia shall adopt and maintain a policy of non-alignment.” Not alignment with the East or alignment with the West, but non-alignment.
The Non-Aligned Movement emerged from the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, where leaders of newly independent Asian and African nations declared that they would not become pawns in the Cold War contest between Washington and Moscow. Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno and Nkrumah had just led their nations out of colonialism. They had no intention of trading European masters for superpower patrons.
The drafters of our Constitution understood that a small country with valuable resources needed strategic flexibility. They wanted Namibia to stand above global conflicts precisely because we needed to engage with all states and institutions in the world. Article 96 also requires Namibia to create and maintain just and mutually beneficial relations among nations.
The 2004 White Paper on Foreign Policy elaborates that national interests constitute an overriding factor in our bilateral relations. The Constitution does not ask who supported us in 1988. It asks what serves Namibia today. Swapo's historical alignments were appropriate for a liberation movement. But Namibia is no longer a liberation movement. Namibia is a sovereign state, governed by a constitution, not by party history.
Welfare of all Namibians
The party wrote Article 96 and thus should honour it.
What does it mean to be pragmatic in foreign policy? It means evaluating every relationship, every deal, every partnership based on what it delivers for Namibia rather than on ideology or historical sentiment. A pragmatic foreign policy does not ask whether a country supported us during the liberation struggle. It asks whether a partnership creates jobs for Namibians today.
It does not ask whether a power is capitalist or communist, Western or Eastern.
It asks whether the terms of a deal leave us better off than we were before.
Pragmatism is not about abandoning principles. It is about recognising that the highest principle of any sovereign state is the welfare of its own people. When a country locks itself into one camp based on historical loyalty and refuses to engage others on their merits, that country is not being principled.
It is being sentimental at its own expense.
Namibians deserve leaders who ask what works rather than who were our friends in 1988.
They deserve a country that negotiates from strength rather than from ideological reflex.
The question is whether we leverage our assets for our benefit or allow historical sentiments to dictate terms that serve others more than ourselves. The Constitution provides our guide. National interests first, mutually beneficial relationships and genuine non-alignment.
That is the Namibia I want to help build.
*Rodney Cloete is a member of parliament, chief whip and shadow minister of international relations and trade for the Independent Patriots for Change. He represents Namibia on the Pan-African Parliament's Committee on Trade, Customs and Immigration.
Comments
Namibian Sun
No comments have been left on this article