By Dhiladhila Magazine · Issue 02
The sector added thousands of workers in a year its share of the economy actually fell. Both facts are true.
At the Chamber of Mines expo in Windhoek in early August 2025, the industry reported that Namibian mining had added about 2,600 jobs in a single year, lifting direct employment to 20,843. It was the figure every official wanted to quote. Sitting behind it was an awkward companion fact: the sector that created those jobs had, on the numbers, contracted.
The Chamber’s own review shows mining created about 2,600 new posts even as its share of GDP slipped to 13.3 per cent from 14.8 per cent the year before, a contraction of roughly 1.2 per cent. Revenue held at N$52.3 billion (about US$2.9 billion), barely ahead of 2023. Employment, in other words, grew on a flat top line, and that gap is the story worth reading.
Where the jobs actually came from
The headline number is really a tale of two commodities. Uranium output rose about 1.8 per cent despite water-supply constraints at the Rossing and Swakop Uranium operations, while gold climbed 2.7 per cent on record production at the Navachab mine. Those gains were large enough to more than absorb a 3.7 per cent fall in diamond production, the sector’s traditional anchor. The payroll grew because two rising minerals carried one that was sliding.
That composition matters for how the 2,600 figure should be read. It is not evidence that mining as a whole is expanding; it is evidence that the fastest-hiring corners of mining were doing so vigorously enough to lift the total. A sector-wide headline is sitting on a uranium-and-gold engine.
The 2,600 jobs are a uranium-and-gold result wearing a whole-sector headline.
A number that tracks investment, not output
Employment in mining follows capital, and capital was moving. Exploration expenditure by Chamber members reached N$1.23 billion in 2024, up 38.1 per cent and a record since independence. Hiring of this kind is a bet on future ounces and pounds, not a reward for current production, which is why the jobs count can rise while the GDP share falls.
For an economist, that distinguishes a durable trend from a cyclical blip. Jobs created to build and explore tend to hold if the projects behind them proceed, but they are exposed to any decision to slow the build. The 2,600 posts are best read as a forward indicator of investor conviction rather than a backward measure of a good year.
Jobs tied to exploration are a vote on the future, not a dividend from the past.
The diamond drag underneath
The contraction has a clear origin. Diamonds, long the largest single contributor to mining value, fell 3.7 per cent as producers met weaker global prices partly by holding back higher-quality stones. Because diamonds carry so much of the sector’s revenue, even a modest decline pulled the whole industry’s GDP share down while uranium and gold pulled employment up.
That split leaves the sector more concentrated than the jobs figure suggests. A single soft commodity can shrink the reported economy of mining even in a year of net hiring, which means the 2,600 gain rests on a base that is less diversified than it looks. Concentration is the quiet risk behind the good news.
One weak commodity can shrink the sector’s GDP even in a year of net hiring.
Reading the headline honestly
None of this makes the 2,600 jobs unreal. They are additional Namibians earning mining wages, and total direct employment of 20,843 is a genuine 14.6 per cent gain on the year. The point is that the number is fragile in a specific way: it depends on the uranium and gold cycle staying favourable and on diamonds not falling faster than the others can compensate.
For policy, the honest reading is that mining diversified its own commodity mix in 2024 more than it diversified the national economy. The jobs are welcome, but they are a reason to widen the sector’s base, not proof that the base is already wide.
A rising payroll on a falling GDP share is a signal to diversify, not to relax.
For an investor or an industrial-policy official, the 2,600 jobs pose a sharper question than a celebration would allow: is Namibian mining growing, or is it simply rotating from diamonds into uranium and gold while the total holds. The decision on the table is whether to treat the jobs figure as a cue to deepen the country’s exposure to that rotation, or as a warning to build income sources that do not move with a single commodity cycle.
Sources: The Namibian; Namibia mining sector records a revenue increase in 2024 (African Mining Market); Namibia mining revenue dips amid diamond slowdown (Xinhua)
