Namibia launches sovereign wealth fund

Namibia has launched a sovereign wealth fund following oil discoveries by TotalEnergies and Shell off its coast. A Reuters report on the Al Jazeera site says President Hage Geingob said the Welwitschia Fund would get an initial injection of 262m Namibian dollars ($16.3m) and invest 2.5% of its portfolio locally to bridge the country’s infrastructure financing gap. The fund will collect some of the royalties from all mineral resources sold as well as some tax revenues and money raised by the government divesting from its investment holdings. ‘We are looking forward to the prospects and opportunities that will emanate from the recent discoveries of oil and the green hydrogen energy, which have the potential to further boost the fund’s capital,’ Geingob said. Other resource-rich African countries with sovereign funds include Angola, Botswana, Libya and Nigeria. In February, TotalEnergies said its Venus prospect offshore in Namibia had found a good quality reservoir, which one source told Reuters was more than 1bn barrels of oil equivalent. It was the second major discovery in a month after Shell also announced a significant find.