Opinion Piece: Is Namibia Regulating the Future – or Restraining It?

By Nashilongo Gervasius

Namibia is at a crossroads. The country stands between two mobility worlds – one fading, one emerging – and its next regulatory decisions will determine whether it becomes among continental leaders in transport innovation or a cautionary tale of missed opportunity. The rise of ride-hailing platforms such as Lefa, Yango, inDrive, and Bolt has forced Namibia to confront a difficult question: Are we trying to regulate progress, or are we trying to preserve the past?

Around the world, and across Africa, the transport sector has been shaken by digital transformation. For more than a decade, ride-hailing has modernised mobility, upended entrenched interests, and offered safer, more predictable transport for millions of people. From Cape Town to Nairobi, Accra to Lusaka, app-based mobility has become a defining feature of urban life.

Namibia is no exception. What began with early local innovators such as Lefa has evolved into a bustling e-hailing landscape where global players now coexist with homegrown solutions. Yet while the market has advanced, the regulatory environment has not. Namibia is attempting to manage a 21st-century mobility revolution using the tools and thinking of 1999. The result has become visible conflict, confusion, and a system that serves neither drivers nor passengers particularly well.

This is not just a transport issue – it is a governance moment. Namibia’s ability to regulate digital mobility will signal whether it is ready to draft laws for the future or remain shackled to the assumptions of a pre-digital past.

Mobility Has Changed. Regulation Has Not.

Ride-hailing disrupted global transportation for a reason: it offered what traditional systems could not. It brought safety through verification, traceability through digital trip logs, affordability for group rides, and reliability in places and times where public transport simply does not functionally exist. In countries with weak public transport networks, these platforms are not a luxury; they have become a lifeline.

Africa has embraced this shift. In South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, and Zambia, regulators have already accepted the inevitability of digital mobility and are updating laws accordingly, introducing dedicated ride-hailing categories and clarifying platform responsibilities. These countries are not perfect, but their laws acknowledge a basic reality: a phone-based trip cannot be regulated like a rank-based taxi hailed on a street corner.

Namibia has yet to make this leap.

The Road Traffic and Transport Act of 1999 – our primary governing legislation – is older than Uber, smartphones, mobile money, and the concepts of platform work. It was written for an era when transport innovation meant installing new street signs or adjusting taxi ranks. Today, the law struggles to classify ride-hailing at all. It cannot distinguish between a metered taxi, a chartered vehicle, and an app-mediated trip. Worse, it treats app-based drivers as if they were traditional operators – even though the models are fundamentally different.

Trying to regulate digital mobility through old frameworks is like trying to operate a modern smartphone using instructions from a Nokia 3310 manual. And the cracks are already visible.

A Fractured Transport Reality

Our research, which included desktop study, surveys, and discussions with commuters, students, and taxi drivers, reveals a system where both traditional taxis and ride-hailing platforms struggle under regulatory uncertainty.

The commuter experience remains unreliable.
Shared taxis remain the cheapest public transport option, yet they are widely associated with unsafe driving, harassment, inconsistent pricing, and indirect routes that lengthen journeys unnecessarily. Many commuters, particularly women, report feeling unsafe in traditional taxis – an anxiety that is not misplaced given widely reported incidents of crime and reckless driving.
Public transport gaps are severe.
Windhoek’s bus system, though essential, is chronically under-resourced. Limited routes, aging fleets, restricted hours, and long waiting times leave thousands with no reliable alternative. This is where ride-hailing steps in, as a flexible, responsive mobility solution that fills gaps in public transit coverage.
Ride-hailing is safer, but not necessarily accessible to all.
Respondents consistently praised ride-hailing for its safety features – GPS tracking, driver registration, shared trip details, and predictable pricing. These features especially benefit students, women, and night-shift workers who often cannot depend on taxis after dark. However, affordability remains a barrier. Surge pricing and long-distance fares can make ride-hailing prohibitively expensive for daily use, limiting its reach to those who can afford digital convenience.
Drivers – both taxi and platform-based – are caught in the middle.
Traditional taxi drivers fear losing their market share to platforms that do not face the same regulatory burden. Ride-hailing drivers, meanwhile, feel trapped between high platform commissions, unclear legal status, and the costs of maintaining vehicles. Both groups feel the system is unfair – just in different ways.

And the root of this dysfunction? A regulatory framework that has not adapted to digital reality.

A Market Innovating Faster Than the Law

Despite the regulatory vacuum, there is no doubt that the ride-hailing industry continues to grow. Platforms have become economic engines, supporting thousands of micro-entrepreneurs and enabling flexible income opportunities for young people – an essential development in a country with youth unemployment exceeding 44%.

Digitalisation is reshaping mobility – and doing so faster than the law can keep up. Two- and three-wheeler delivery bikes, electric vehicles, hybrid models, and multi-modal trip planning are no longer futuristic ideas; they are already part of Africa’s mobility landscape and visible within the transport ecosystem.

If Namibia continues relying on legacy rules that pre-date smartphones, we risk:

Excluding new mobility innovations
Creating unnecessary conflict with taxi associations
Suppressing job creation
Discouraging investment
Undermining commuter safety
Allowing unregulated systems to flourish underground

This is not regulating for public safety – it is regulating for paralysis.

What People Actually Want

Across our survey and community engagement, results show:

Safety is paramount. Ride-hailing outranks traditional taxis by a wide margin on perceived safety.
Convenience matters. People want reliable transport that shows up when needed, especially in early morning and late-night hours when taxis are scarce.
Affordability is the biggest obstacle. Traditional taxis remain cheaper, but passengers are tired of unpredictable experiences and unsafe driving.
Drivers want fairness. Both taxi and ride-hailing drivers are asking for transparent, balanced rules – not politically motivated decisions or inconsistent enforcement.

People are not rejecting digital mobility. They are rejecting chaos.

The Case for a New Regulatory Compact

Namibia urgently needs a modern, future-ready mobility law – one that is fair, proportionate, and adaptable. A balanced regulatory model should:

Recognize ride-hailing as its own category, with appropriate distinctions from metered taxis.
Treat platforms as intermediaries, not default vehicle operators.
Place permit obligations on drivers and vehicle owners, with simplified compliance.
Introduce digital permitting systems to eliminate bureaucracy and stop illegal permit renting.
Mandate safety standards, including driver vetting, insurance, and in-app emergency tools.
Require platforms to provide anonymized mobility data for planning and safety oversight.
Accommodate future mobility modes, including electric vehicles, tuk-tuks, two-wheelers, and shared mobility innovations.
Ensure fairness and transparency for drivers, including clear earning structures and grievance mechanisms.

These reforms are not radical – they are standard practice in modern cities around the world. Namibia does not need to reinvent global mobility; it simply needs to update its frameworks to reflect today’s realities.

The Future Will Not Wait

The rise of digital mobility is not a trend – it is a transition. Trying to suppress it will only push it underground. Trying to ignore it will only widen the gap between the regulated and the unregulated. And attempting to force innovative models into outdated laws will stifle both safety and economic opportunity.

Namibia must decide what it wants: a transport system that evolves, or one that erodes. If the country chooses progress – by choosing to regulate the future rather than restrain it – it can build a safer, smarter, more inclusive mobility ecosystem that serves all: commuters, drivers, operators, and the next generation of digital entrepreneurs.

The moment is now. The question is simple. Will Namibia regulate for yesterday – or boldly shape tomorrow?

About the Author
Nashilongo Gervasius Nakale is a Public Policy Researcher with a special interest in Technology Policy. She is the Director of NamTshuwe Digital, a social enterprise at the intersection of technology policy research, training, programme development, and strategic communications.

The views in this article do not represent those of her formal employer.