Namibia · Residency by investment
Permanent Residence (section 26, Immigration Control Act 1993)
Effectively frozen. Following Immigration Selection Board v Knoche [2025] NAHCMD 180 (17 April 2025) — in which the court found the Board had applied a 'fixed assets' test with no statutory basis and ordered issuance — execution was stayed pending a Supreme Court appeal, and the Ministry used the stay to suspend all permanent residence decisions. Reportedly around 55 applications are stuck, some for 18 months.
Namibian PR is the only gateway to a naturalisation clock that actually runs, which makes the current freeze more than an inconvenience — it has stopped the only viable long-term path into the country. Even when it resumes, naturalisation requires surrendering every other citizenship you hold.
Qualifying routes
no statutory qualifying residence period exists; section 26(6) allows in-country application
The facts
- Total landed cost
- Modest official fees — but the practical cost is an indefinite wait and probable litigation
- Timeline
- 18–60 months — decisions frozen since April 2025 pending the Supreme Court appeal; no reliable timeline exists
- Physical presence
- Once granted, PR lapses on absence exceeding 2 years — note this is the reverse of a qualifying period, and is the source of the widely repeated and incorrect 'two-year rule'
- Family
- spouse and dependent children
- Permanent residency
- This is the permanent residence status
- Citizenship
- Naturalisation requires 10 years' continuous ordinary residence — and only PR time counts, not permit time
- Language test
- no statutory language test
- Dual citizenship
- Not permitted — you would have to renounce
- Requirements
- application to the Immigration Selection Boardgood charactermeans of supportno statutory residence period prescribed
- Decisions are frozen. Filing now buys a place in a queue that is not moving, pending a Supreme Court appeal with no listed hearing date.
- There is no statutory qualifying period — the commonly cited 'five-year rule' does not exist. The two-year figure people repeat is the lapse rule for absences, not an eligibility test.
- The Immigration Selection Board's discretion is broad and has been repeatedly found to have been abused. Budget for judicial review as a normal cost of this route, not an exception.
- Naturalisation is 10 years, not 5. The Constitution Second Amendment Act 7 of 2010 raised Article 4(5)(b) from 5 to 10 years, and the marriage route from 2 to 10. Namibia's own Permanent Mission to the UN was still publishing the pre-2010 text when we checked — official-looking and stale.
- Section 5(1)(g) requires an applicant to be willing to renounce the citizenship of any foreign country, and section 5(8) makes the grant absolutely discretionary with no reasons and no appeal. Section 7(1)(a) then strips Namibian citizenship from a naturalised citizen who later voluntarily acquires another nationality. For a multi-citizenship family this is disqualifying.
- Namibian-born children are constitutionally protected under Article 4(8) and may hold dual citizenship freely — the restriction bites only on the naturalising parent.