Huge potential to tap in China-Namibia cooperation

China and Namibia have strong complementarity in industry and trade structures, a good cooperation foundation and huge collaboration potential. This explains why Beijing chose Namibia as the first stop of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's visit to four African countries. The others being the Republic of the Congo, Chad and Nigeria.

In 2023, the bilateral trade volume between China and Namibia was $1.31 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.5 percent. China mainly exports electromechanical products, textiles, furniture, and other manufactured products to Namibia. It imports natural resources such as uranium, lead, manganese, and copper ore from the coastal country in southwest Africa.

Namibia is rich in mineral resources and is known as the "strategic metal reserve" for the world. Its main mineral deposits include diamonds, uranium, copper, lead, zinc, gold, etc. The output of uranium in the country was 8,200 tons last year, making it one of the top four producers of the key mineral resource along with Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia.

No wonder Namibia has close economic and trade ties with Western countries. The United States and some European Union countries are Namibia's main aid donors. But in recent years, Namibia has actively promoted its Looking East policy and strengthened cooperation with Asian countries. While attaching great importance to relations with China, it has also actively strengthened cooperation with Japan, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore in various fields.

China values Namibia's balanced strategic autonomy in foreign policy, attaches great importance to the development of China-Namibia relations, and is willing to carry forward the traditional friendship between the two countries, deepen mutually beneficial cooperation, and promote the continuous development of their comprehensive strategic partnership that was established in 2018 to better benefit the people of the two countries.

China is also willing to strengthen exchanges with Namibia, share development opportunities, and promote the two countries' modernization. The two sides should strengthen the docking of their development strategies and create new highlights of cooperation in the fields of agriculture, clean energy, infrastructure, energy minerals, and science and technology.

Beijing encourages Chinese companies to invest and start businesses in Namibia, and hopes that Namibia will continue to provide relevant convenience and support.

China firmly supports Namibia in various regional and global mechanisms, and is willing to strengthen multilateral strategic coordination with Namibia on the world stage, so as to continue to consolidate and strengthen the solidarity of the Global South, and contribute to the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.