Turning Growth Into Jobs: Namibia’s New Strategy for Worker-Centred Development

In Namibia’s policy halls, a shift is underway. The government is no longer satisfied with growth figures alone; it now aims to embed job creation at the heart of every decision. For workers and unions this represents a critical turning point: no longer just “more work”, but better, more inclusive work.

Evidence becomes the baseline for policy

Namibia has committed to using Employment Impact Assessments (EmpIAs) as a core tool to evaluate how investments, laws and programmes translate into employment outcomes.  At a high-level event co-hosted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Namibia’s Ministry of Justice and Labour Relations, senior officials emphasised the EmpIA as “a structured and analytical exercise that helps us evaluate how policies, programmes, projects and laws influence employment outcomes.” But the significance of EmpIAs goes far beyond that definition; they represent a fundamental redesign of how economic policy is made.

What makes EmpIAs different?

Traditional impact assessments; environmental, financial, and social examine whether a project is viable, sustainable, or profitable. But they rarely answer the most urgent question in high-unemployment economies: Will this decision create meaningful work for people who desperately need it?

EmpIAs fill this gap.

What an EmpIA actually assesses

An EmpIA examines:

• How many jobs a policy or investment will create, destroy, or transform

• The type of jobs (skilled/unskilled, temporary/permanent, formal/informal)

• Who benefits (women, youth, rural workers, low-income groups)

• Job quality (wages, safety, security, union access, rights)

• Sector multipliers for example, how renewable energy creates more indirect jobs than mining

• Risks to existing workers, including automation or outsourcing

In short:

Environmental Impact Assessments protect the planet.

Financial Impact Assessments protect the project.

Employment Impact Assessments protect workers.

Why this matters for Namibia’s workers

For Namibia’s workforce; one of the highest-unemployment populations in the region, this policy shift matters. Recent data show unemployment at around 37%, youth unemployment at 45% or more.

For decades, growth has come from capital-intensive sectors such as mining and extraction, which generate high revenues but limited employment.

The EmpIA framework gives workers and unions a tool to challenge this pattern. It shifts the conversation from “Did the economy grow?” to “Who benefited from the growth and how?”

As Minister Fillemon Wise Immanuel put it: “Our planning must not only be about the quantity of jobs but also the quality, fair wages, safe working environments, and the protection of industrial rights.”

What policy decisions look like with EmpIAs

Without EmpIA:

• A mining project gets approved because it increases GDP.

• Jobs created: minimal.

• Local unemployment unchanged.

• Training and decent work considerations optional.

With EmpIA:

• Project must specify how many direct and indirect jobs it will create.

• Must demonstrate how it will include women and youth.

• Must justify labour vs automation decisions.

• Must include commitments to training, safety, and fair wages.

• Must disclose job risks and propose protections.

This is where EmpIAs become a power-shifting tool: they provide evidence that unions can mobilise around.

Lessons for the African labour movement

Namibia’s move holds broader relevance for unions and labour organisers across Africa:

Embed employment-impact thinking: Unions should push for policies and public investments to include job-impact assessments. If every law, budget or infrastructure project is evaluated for how many jobs (and what kind of jobs) it produces, worker leverage rises.

Data and transparency matter: The counselling and training sessions for public officials signal an important shift: more data, better metrics, stronger accountability. Unions need access to these tools.

Shift from growth to decent work: It is one thing to create jobs, another to ensure those jobs are decent; unionisable, safe, and equitable. The labour movement must hold governments and employers to the decent-work standard.

Link across struggles: Youth unemployment, gender exclusion, informalisation and lack of social protection are all components of this challenge. The work of embedding EmpIAs is not merely technical but political: who gains, who is left behind, and how labour power can be rebalance­­d.

From reactive to proactive organising: Instead of simply responding to job-loss or casualisation, unions can now engage upstream, at the design phase of policy and investment, so their demands influence outcomes.

Conclusion

Namibia’s commitment to Employment Impact Assessments marks a bold and necessary shift: growth without jobs is hollow, and jobs without dignity are unjust. EmpIAs offer workers something rare; a structural tool that embeds their interests into the machinery of policymaking.

For the African labour movement, the message is clear:

We cannot leave job creation to chance, nor can we accept any job as progress.

Workers deserve purpose, protection, fair pay, and voice. When a country turns its policy lens toward employment outcomes, labour gains a stronger platform to demand dignity at work.

Namibia has opened the door. Across the continent, unions and worker movements must be ready to step through.

References:

• “Namibia commits to using Employment Impact Assessments to drive its job creation agenda”, ILO Newsroom, 10 November 2025.Link

• “UN pushes Namibia to link every policy to job creation”, Windhoek Observer, 8 November 2025.Link

• “Why are you unemployed? High unemployment in Namibia”, The Namibian (statistics context)Link