Namibia · Employment
Employment Permit (section 27, Immigration Control Act 1993)
Open
Last verified July 2026
Open and the only real route in practice. What agencies market as a 'Business Investment Permit' or 'investor permit' is this ordinary employment permit, issued to someone employed by their own company. There is no investor category in the Act and no statutory capital threshold.
Namibia's tax system is genuinely excellent — territorial, no CGT, no inheritance tax — and its immigration system is genuinely broken. The honest advice is to enjoy the tax treatment as a permit-holder and abandon any plan that depends on reaching permanent residence or citizenship.
Qualifying routes
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Employer-sponsored employment
tied to employer, job and location; compulsory labour-market test requiring advertising in 3 national newspapers for 2 weeks
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Employment by one's own company
the substance of what is sold as an 'investor permit'; no statutory minimum capital exists
The facts
- Total landed cost
- Modest official fees plus professional costs. We could not verify a reliable family-of-four total from any official source.
- Timeline
- 2–4 months — officially stated as 8-10 weeks; 2-4 months in practice
- Physical presence
- Employment-based; permits run 1-2 years, renewable
- Family
- spouse and dependent children as accompanying dependants
- Permanent residency
- None that works reliably. Permanent residence under section 26 has no statutory qualifying period, but decisions have been frozen since April 2025 (see watch-outs).
- Citizenship
- Effectively blocked. Section 5(3)(b) of the Citizenship Act 14 of 1990 provides that no period counts toward the residence requirement where the applicant has the right to reside in Namibia only by virtue of a temporary permit. Years on an employment permit count for nothing.
- Language test
- no statutory language test — section 5(1)(f) requires only adequate knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges of Namibian citizenship
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- job offer or own companylabour-market test (advertising in 3 national newspapers for 2 weeks)qualifications and police clearancemedical certificate
What can go wrong
- Time on an employment permit counts for nothing toward citizenship. Section 5(3)(b) excludes any period held only under a temporary permit, and the Supreme Court held in Minister of Home Affairs v Holtzmann 2020 (2) NR 303 (SC) that Namibian domicile cannot be acquired while present only on a work permit, even with intent to remain.
- There is no investor permit and no capital threshold. Agency figures contradict each other — N$2m, N$3.95m, N$4m — while another agency admits there is no minimum. Treat any NAD threshold you are quoted as pure marketing.
- Permanent residence decisions have been frozen since April 2025. In Immigration Selection Board v Knoche [2025] NAHCMD 180 the court found the Board had refused PR on a 'fixed assets' test that does not appear in section 26(3)(d) and ordered issuance; execution was stayed pending a Supreme Court appeal, and the Ministry used the stay to freeze all PR decisions — reportedly around 55 applications, some 18 months old.
- The Immigration Selection Board has a documented pattern of judicially criticised conduct: Kitching 2023 (1) NR 121 (HC), Viljoen 2017 (1) NR 132 (HC) (abuse of discretion), Frank 2001 NR 107 (SC).
- Henley's own 'Namibia Residence by Investment' page states the process is under government review. The product was USD 365,000 into a single private development (President's Links Estate, Walvis Bay) wrapped around an ordinary work permit — a single-developer real-estate scheme with no statutory basis.
- The Namibia Investment Promotion Act 9 of 2016 was never brought into force — the ministerial commencement notice was never issued — so its repeal of the Foreign Investment Act 1990 never took effect either. The replacement Bill is still not law after roughly ten years.
- The EPZ Act is repealed with grandfathering expired on 31 December 2025, and the SEZ Bill is still not law. There is no operative zone regime to plan around.
- Namibia was removed from the FATF grey list at the June 2026 plenary, but it remains on the EU AML high-risk third-country list under Delegated Regulations (EU) 2026/46 and 2026/83 pending a European Parliament vote. Banking friction persists.
- Namibia has not committed to CRS at all — the OECD lists it among developing countries not asked to commit with no exchange date. Attractive to some, but a bank-onboarding flag and not a stable assumption.