Four hundred youths operating in oil and gas fields have benefitted from the PetroFund flagship programme.

The programme is aimed at imparting skills to Namibians to allow them to venture into the sector and not rely on international expertise.

Head of Communications & Stakeholder Engagement: PetroFund

In efforts to create experts that specialise in oil and gas, the government has set a programme since 1992 to train Namibians who have the necessary undergraduate qualification to study master's programmes in different disciplines in oil- and gas-related fields.

This includes oil and gas economics, reservoir engineering, oil and gas engineering programmes and technical drilling technician training, among others.

The Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement at PetroFund, Shoki Kandjimi, said these are crucial programmes that can assist in most of the activities taking place offshore.

As you know, Namibia has now discovered oil. It's very important that we now have our own experts, you know. We don't want to rely on international expertise. So, we are now bringing up the idea to ensure that we send out Namibians who have the necessary undergraduate qualification to go study master's programmes in different disciplines. They need to maintain when there is a floating vessel, which is called the FBSO. They need to be on that vessel so that they really do all that work.

To unpack all the different aspects of the oil and gas industry, Kandjimi highlighted that they have partnered up with local and international oil and gas companies that are collaborating with universities and training institutions.

"So, really, to date, we have trained over 400, maybe since our establishment in 1992. You would note that some of these programmes are quite costly because of the speciality that they require. And you would know anything that works with oil and gas comes with quite a very high price. It's not a very cheap one. TVET graduates: a lot of people have done quite very well. But for this year, for the 2026 academic year, we have about a hundred students on our scholarship that are studying locally and internationally.