By Dhiladhila Magazine · April 2026

A president tells two oil majors that a deal has to work for Namibia too.

On 16 April 2026 President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told Shell and TotalEnergies plainly that partnerships must be mutually beneficial and ensure shared value. It reads as diplomatic courtesy; it is closer to an opening position in a negotiation.

A host government’s bargaining power over an oil development is greatest before the money is committed, and a head of state setting the tone of shared value is signalling the terms on which Namibia intends to do business with the companies drilling its waters.

Why the framing matters

Deepwater development is a decades-long marriage between a state and a major, governed by terms that decide how the eventual value splits. When a president stresses mutual benefit at the outset, she is anchoring expectations before the detailed fiscal and local-content terms are settled.

The message is aimed as much at Namibians as at the companies: the government intends to be a partner, not merely a landlord collecting rent.

Shared value stated early is a marker for the terms set later.

The bargaining clock

A host country holds its strongest hand before a final investment decision, when a major still needs its licences, approvals and goodwill. Once billions are sunk, renegotiating terms is far harder. Setting expectations now, while Shell and TotalEnergies are still committing, is well-timed.

That is why the moment of partnership, not the moment of production, is when the price of the deal is really fixed.

The terms are cheapest to shape before the first platform is built.

What shared value can mean

Shared value is a phrase that has to become clauses: national equity stakes, fiscal terms that give the state a fair take, local-content requirements, skills transfer and infrastructure the country keeps. The test is whether the principle survives into the contracts.

For the majors, a stable, fairly structured deal is also in their interest, because terms seen as exploitative invite the political risk of later revision.

A principle only counts once it is written into the contract.

The balance to strike

The risk on the other side is overreach: terms so demanding that capital hesitates and the basin develops slowly, if at all. Namibia is competing for the majors’ spending against other frontiers, so mutual benefit must be genuinely mutual, not a one-way squeeze.

The art is a deal generous enough to attract the investment and firm enough to keep a fair share at home.

The winning deal attracts the capital and keeps a fair share.

The competition for capital

Namibia is not the only frontier courting the majors’ spending; it competes with Guyana, Suriname and others for the same finite exploration budgets. That competition disciplines how hard a host can push, because terms seen as too demanding send capital elsewhere.

The president’s emphasis on mutual benefit reads, in that light, as calibrated rather than combative: firm enough to secure a national share, generous enough to keep Namibia attractive against rivals for the same dollars.

A host bargains hardest knowing the capital can always sail away.

The bottom line for business

Stripped to its essentials, the development changes a calculation a Namibian business or investor now has to make. It shifts, however slightly, the balance of where opportunity sits, what it costs to act, and how much confidence to place in the direction the country is taking, and that shift is the reason to pay attention beyond the passing news of it.

The prudent response is neither to overreact to a single move nor to ignore it, but to fold it into a longer read of where Namibia is heading and to position accordingly, early enough to benefit if the direction holds and cautiously enough to absorb it if the follow-through disappoints.

Fold the signal into the long read, and position early but cautiously.

For an investor, an official or a supplier, the president’s message is the clearest signal yet of the terms Namibia expects from its oil partnerships. The decision it frames is whether the state can convert the language of shared value into contracts that attract the majors’ capital while securing a durable national stake, in the narrow window before the developments are locked in.

Sources: President on oil partnerships (Nampa); Ministry of Mines and Energy