Looking back at a GREAT 2012 and ahead to 2013

Happy New Year to everyone! I trust you all enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and New Year and are entering 2013 suitably refreshed and ready to seize its fresh opportunities.

Windhoek is starting to fill up again after looking like a bit of a ghost town for the last six weeks – with most away on farms, down on the coast or visiting relatives at different ends of this vast country. It is getting harder to get parking in the town centre once more and the traffic is starting to build up (though not quite to London levels, thank goodness!) – all healthy signs that the capital is getting back up to full strength and moving ahead with the new year.

This is traditionally the time of year where we take a minute to look back at all the accomplishments of the last year– before looking forward to our plans for the next 12 months.

2012 was a wonderful year for the UK and strengthening our bilateral relations with Namibia. London hosted the fantastic London 2012 Olympic Games – and Namibian sprinter Johanna Benson brought back Namibia’s first Olympic gold in the Paralympic Women’s T37 200 metres as well as another silver to add to Frankie Fredericks previous haul from the 1990s. This gave us all cause to celebrate Namibia’s growing sporting excellence and what was clearly the “greatest show on earth” last year. We also celebrated Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s magnificent Diamond Jubilee – marking her 60 years on the British throne – with a series of spectacular events in London. We held our own enlarged Queen’s Birthday Party at the British Residence in Windhoek: complete with military band, an especially commissioned Olympic dance performed by local school children, fish n chips, and strawberries and cream.

We also used the occasion to launch the GREAT campaign in Namibia, show-casing the many reasons why the UK is still one of the best place in the world to visit, live, work, study and do business. We linked up video footage of Prince Harry, David Beckham and other notable British icons who shared their personal stories to back up this impressive global campaign and encourage more visitors to our famous shores.

Last year, we also kicked off and further developed a range of exciting projects in Namibia – from bringing British police experts over to assist NAMPOL with introducing ground-breaking community policing models,

to supporting preparations for linking Namibia up with the Africa Free Trade Initiative and providing solar cookers to an innovative environmental project in the NamibRand. The High Commission also worked to address key themes like tackling sexual violence, increasing women’s participation in business and leadership, preventing child abuse, promoting sustainable energy use, and greater professionalisation of the Namibian tourist guiding industry (a big launch on this issue to happen shortly).

Bilateral trade between the UK and Namibia continued to grow – and my team worked hard to promote Namibia as an attractive investment destination – and produced a well received Doing Business in Namibia investment guide. Do get hold of a copy – it makes really interesting reading. British companies continued to increase their presence in the mining, oil and gas, marine services and tourism sectors – and I remain keen to learn more about British commercial ventures in Namibia at whatever stage and do all I can to support them – so keep me posted.

I continued my travels around this fascinating country to help promote British business, meet local officials, visit UK-funded projects, and engaged with locals and resident Brits alike. I had the privileged to do a

big tour of the south in the first half of the year and enjoyed a really informative trip to the north in the second half. This took me from seeing NamDebs huge diamond mining operations around the Orange River in the far south of the country to visiting vulnerable children benefiting from a UK-funded feeding project in Caprivi

in the far north. This has given me a much better understanding of the range of challenges being faced in rural areas of Namibia and helped me engage better with local authorities, businesses and residents to help address them.

I would like to use this opportunity to acknowledge and thank my staff at the High Commission for their continued hard work in supporting this broad work agenda as well as my colleagues in the UK who have made these many achievements possible.

2013 also offers a lot more opportunities. The British High Commission in Namibia is working hard to build on our growing commercial links here, expand our lively British Business Group even more, (hopefully) welcome another visiting British minister to Windhoek, enjoy a Royal Navy ship’s visit to Walvis Bay and offer more Chevening scholarships for bring young Namibians to do fully-funded post-graduate studies in the UK. We are also looking to expand our front line staff and are in the process of hiring a new Commercial Officer to help boost our trade links still further and provide even better support for British businesses looking to invest and do business here.

So it’s set to be another exciting year of growth and opportunity – and I look forward to keeping you updated on our latest developments and hearing more about yours that impact on developing UK/Namibia relations. Let’s stay in touch!