By Dhiladhila Magazine · Q1 2026

Namibia has laws to share the value of its biological wealth. The problem is they were never switched on.

A law that is passed but never implemented protects no one. Namibia’s IP analysis recommended operationalising passed-but-unimplemented laws on access to biological and genetic resources and to traditional knowledge – rules meant to ensure communities share in the value drawn from their natural and cultural wealth.

The gap is not a missing law but a dormant one. Namibia has the statutes; what it lacks is the machinery to make benefit-sharing actually happen when a company commercialises an indigenous plant or a community’s traditional knowledge.

What benefit-sharing is meant to do

Access and benefit-sharing rules exist so that when outsiders use a country’s genetic resources or a community’s traditional knowledge – a plant with medicinal properties, an indigenous technique – the community and country get a fair share of the resulting value. It is a defence against biopiracy and a way to turn natural heritage into local income.

For communities that hold that knowledge, the rules are the difference between being a source of value and a beneficiary of it.

Benefit-sharing turns a community from a source into a stakeholder.

Why a dormant law fails

A statute on the books but not operationalised has no permits, no procedures and no enforcement, so in practice access happens without the sharing the law intends. The value flows out; the benefit does not flow back. Implementation – the regulations, institutions and processes – is what makes a right real.

The recommendation to operationalise is an admission that the legal intent has, so far, produced little practical protection.

A law without machinery is a promise no one has to keep.

The Namibian stake

Namibia is rich in unique biodiversity and indigenous knowledge – marula, devil’s claw, hoodia and more have commercial histories. Making benefit-sharing work would let communities and the country capture a fair return when these resources are commercialised, rather than watching the value be developed and owned abroad.

It is both an equity issue and an economic one, tying conservation and community welfare to the commercial use of natural assets.

Namibia’s biological wealth is only an asset if its benefit comes home.

From dormant to working

Operationalising the laws means building the permit systems, the community-consent processes and the enforcement that turn principle into practice. It is administrative, unglamorous work, which is why it has lagged. The measure of success is whether a company using a Namibian genetic resource actually shares the benefit.

For a community or policymaker, the read is that the rights exist on paper; the task is to make them function.

The rights are written; the work is making them operate.

Turning heritage into income

Operational benefit-sharing would let Namibia treat its biodiversity and indigenous knowledge as economic assets rather than free inputs for others. Marula, devil’s claw and similar resources have commercial histories largely developed and captured abroad; working benefit-sharing would route a fair share of that value back to the communities and country of origin.

It aligns conservation with income, giving communities a direct financial reason to protect the natural and cultural wealth the rules are meant to defend.

Benefit-sharing makes protecting heritage pay the people who hold it.

Reading it against the boom

Almost every economic story in Namibia now runs, directly or at one remove, into the same larger current: the offshore oil and green-energy build that is reshaping expectations across the country. This development is worth placing against that backdrop, because the boom changes the stakes of ordinary policy and business decisions, raising both the opportunity of getting them right and the cost of getting them wrong while the window is open.

The connection is not always obvious, but it is usually there. Capital, skills, infrastructure and attention are being pulled toward the energy story, and any initiative that competes for or complements those resources is shaped by it. Judging this one means asking how it fits the larger transformation the country is betting on.

In today’s Namibia, most roads eventually lead back to the boom.

For a community, a conservationist or a policymaker, operationalising Namibia’s benefit-sharing laws would finally connect the country’s biological and cultural wealth to the people who hold it. The decision it presses is whether the government builds the permits, consent processes and enforcement that make the dormant statutes work, so that the value of Namibian genetic resources and traditional knowledge is shared rather than simply taken.

Sources: Operationalising benefit-sharing laws (The Villager); Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism