Namibia says it won’t accept ‘even one’ migrant from UK after British approach

JOHANNESBURG – Namibia has announced that it will not accept a single migrant from the UK despite an approach by the British Government regarding a possible deal similar to the one that has been agreed with Rwanda.

“We are not accepting migrants from the UK, even if it’s just one,” asserted Penda Naanda, executive director of the country’s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation (Mirco).

“We are not going to have people imposed on us. Why would we take people who were going on a boat to the UK to find jobs and economic benefits? A country cannot be told to take migrants.”

Mirco said it had been approached by the UK Government to be part of its asylum plans, as Rwanda had, but declined the offer.

The UK has received asylum seekers from Namibia in the past, though Mirco claims it has declined 90 per cent of applicants. In 2022, 860 individuals from Namibia applied for asylum in the UK, up from just 16 in 2016. The majority were based on sexual orientation and between 2016 and 2020, 61 Namibians were granted asylum.

The Times reported last week that the UK had been searching for another third-country deportation deal and had been in talks with Armenia, Ivory Coast, Costa Rica and Botswana, according to leaked documents. Namibia had declined to engage in discussions in August 2021, and the Foreign Office had concluded that it was “unlikely to be swayed by financial incentives”.

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As the Rwanda deal makes its way through Parliament and the courts, the UK Government says it is always open to conversations with other countries on this area of work. The Home Office told i that “our deal with Rwanda seeks to set a new international approach to enhance economic prosperity in the region by investing in upskilling, development and projects which will benefit both migrants and their hosts”.

Earlier this week, Botswana’s foreign minister, Dr Lebogang Kwape, confirmed the country had also rejected an approach by the UK to take migrants and asylum seekers. He stated that his British counterpart had explicitly mentioned Afghanis as one group the UK were looking to resettle elsewhere, adding: “The British government doesn’t want these people in their country so they want to bury them in a faraway country.”

He said Botswana had declined the UK’s approach because “to receive unwanted immigrants from another country would be unfair to Botswana” as it is “in a situation where we cannot accept migrants from a third country”.

Namibia is more than three times the size of the UK, and with a population of just 2.5 million, it is the second least densely populated country in the world.

James Cleverly has said that Africa’s most densely populated country needs migrants because of the 1994 genocide.

While it has been ruled by the same party (Swapo) since independence in 1990, Namibia is a more respected democracy than Rwanda, where international observers trust the election results. It has a GDP per capita of $5,000 compared with Rwanda’s $966.

Botswana has a GDP per capita of $7,738, a population of 2.6 million and is roughly double the size of the UK, suggesting the two Kalahari Desert nations would have been seen as more suitable if size, population, democratic stability and economic opportunity were factors in deciding which countries to select, as has been reported.