By Dhiladhila Magazine · February 2026

An oil discovery hands a state one moment of real bargaining power – before first oil, not after. The question is whether it is used.

An oil discovery gives a host state a single window of real bargaining power, and it sits before first oil rather than after. President Nandi-Ndaitwah has used that window, telling Shell and TotalEnergies that Namibia expects partnerships that are mutually beneficial and deliver shared value rather than volumes shipped and margins banked elsewhere.

The framing is quiet but pointed. It positions the state not as a grateful recipient of investment but as a party with terms of its own, negotiating while its bargaining position is at its strongest – after the resource is proven and before the majors have sunk the capital that locks arrangements in for decades.

Bargaining power has a shelf life

A government’s negotiating power over an oil project peaks in the gap between discovery and final investment decision. Before that, the resource is a prospect; after it, the terms are largely fixed and the state spends decades living with whatever was agreed. Insisting on shared value now, rather than after first oil, is a reading of exactly when the state can be heard.

The President’s message lands in that gap. By speaking directly to Shell and TotalEnergies about the shape of the partnership, she is using the moment when the majors still need a signature more than the state needs their spend, which is the only moment that produces terms the country can defend later.

A host state is loudest in the pause between a discovery and a decision to build.

What shared value has to mean

Shared value is a phrase that can be filled with content or left hollow, and the difference is everything. Filled, it means local employment, procurement inside Namibia, revenue that reaches the treasury on defined terms, and skills that stay after the operators leave. Hollow, it is a courtesy in a press release. The President’s task is to keep it the former.

That is harder than it sounds, because each element has to be written into agreements that outlast any single administration. A commitment to shared value that is not translated into enforceable local-content and fiscal terms is a sentiment, and sentiment does not survive a downturn in the oil price.

Shared value counts only where it is written into the contract, not the speech.

Negotiating as an equal, not a supplicant

The posture matters as much as the substance. Addressing the majors as counterparties with mutual obligations, rather than as benefactors to be thanked, sets the register for everything that follows. It tells the companies that access to the acreage carries expectations, and it tells Namibians that the state intends to bargain on their behalf.

That stance is credible only if the state can hold it under pressure, when timelines slip and the majors argue that tougher terms threaten the project. Statecraft here is the ability to keep asking for shared value without frightening off the capital that makes any value possible in the first place.

The hard part is demanding more without being talked out of the deal entirely.

The signal to the wider market

How Namibia handles Shell and TotalEnergies is watched by every other operator eyeing the Orange Basin. A state that secures genuine shared value sets a benchmark that later entrants expect to meet; one that settles for headline investment alone signals that its terms are soft. The President is, in effect, pricing the country’s partnerships for the whole queue.

The risk cuts both ways. Terms seen as unworkable could cool appetite at a delicate stage, while terms seen as generous could lock in a bad bargain for a generation. Getting the balance right is the substance of the negotiation, not a detail of it.

The first deal a state signs sets the price of every one that follows.

For an investor or an operator weighing Namibian acreage, the President’s stance is the clearest read yet on the terms of entry: partnership with the state as an equal, and value that stays in the country. The decision it forces is whether to build those commitments into the deal now, while the state is negotiating, rather than contest them once first oil has removed its bargaining power.

Sources: President tells majors partnerships must be mutually beneficial (Nampa); Ministry of Mines and Energy