Chinese overseas lending / NAM
Namibia: debt owed to China
In 2021, Namibia is estimated to have owed China $489m, equal to 3.9% of its GDP, which ranks it 79 of 126 borrowers in the panel by dollars owed. The estimated stock peaked at $1.69bn in 2016.
The estimated stock, 2000 to 2021
The largest single-year move in the estimated stock is 2014, when it rose by $461m.
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending. Selection: estimated stock owed to China by Namibia, by year and instrument, 2000 to 2021. Zeros are estimated zeros (no known loans outstanding), not missing values. Methodology
Historical loan records from the 2021 release
These records come from the 2021 HRT Mendeley replication release, not the November 2025 refreshed stock panel charted above. The refresh uses the updated Franz, Horn, Parks, Reinhart and Trebesch methodology, so this table cannot be reconciled to the chart. The earlier release marks 5 loan-level records for Namibia as part of its debt-estimate sample, spanning 2005 to 2012. Comparable commitments are available for 5 of those loans and sum to $440m. These are gross commitments, not outstanding debt stocks. The stock methodology applies disbursement and amortisation profiles, with imputation where loan terms are missing, so the commitment sum must not be compared with the stock above. See the methodology. Terms are sparse by source: interest rate appears on 4 loans, grace period on 2, maturity on 3, any of the three on 4, and all three together on 2. The earlier file also carries 49 additional project rows for Namibia outside that sample, so they are not included in this table.
| Year | Project | Commitment, USD | Commitment, source currency | Terms | Creditor | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Purchase of 10% Stake in Husab Uranium Mine ID: NAM_45 · Source: JH CARI | $223m | n/a | rate n/a | grace n/a | maturity n/a | Swakop Uranium (SU) State-owned enterprise | Loan Commercial · borrower SOE |
| 2012 | 126 million USD Loan for MR67 and DR3602 Road Upgrade ID: NAM_42 · Source: AidData, JH CARI | $126m | USD 126,000,000 | rate 2% | grace 5y | maturity 15y | China Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) State-owned policy bank | Loan Concessional · borrower Central government |
| 2009 | Reinfontein National Youth Training Centre ID: NAM_38 · Source: JH CARI | $18m | n/a | rate 0% | grace n/a | maturity n/a | China Ministry of Commerce (MofCom) Chinese government | Loan Zero-Interest Loan · borrower Central government |
| 2007 | China loans 301 million Namibia dollars for Modern Scanning Machines ID: NAM_30 · Source: AidData, JH CARI | $43m | NAD 301,000,000 | rate 2% | grace 3y | maturity 20y | China Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) State-owned policy bank | Loan Concessional · borrower Central government |
| 2005 | China loans 250 million yuan to Namibia for railway equipment ID: NAM_17 · Source: AidData, JH CARI | $31m | RMB 250,000,000 | rate 3% | grace n/a | maturity 15y | China Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) State-owned policy bank | Loan Concessional · borrower Central government |
Source: Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch, China’s Overseas Lending (2021 Mendeley replication loan file). Selection: 2021 replication loan records mapped to Namibia and flagged DebtEstimateSample = 1 in that release. This is an earlier source universe, not the records used for the November 2025 refreshed stock panel. CommitmentUSD is a gross commitment flow and is not comparable to the charted stock. Commitment stays in its source currency, and ProjectDescription is rendered as free-text data from the file. Methodology
Against what Namibia reports owing to all creditors
No comparison is possible. Namibia has no row in the World Bank International Debt Statistics table. There is no reported all-creditor stock to measure the China estimate against, so the ratio is n/a, not zero and not a hundred percent. This is a difference in the scope of the two datasets, not evidence of anything hidden. The two-sources page lists every borrower in this position.