Kuugongelwa-Amadhila elected as first woman National Assembly speaker after decade as prime minister

Former prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has been elected as the speaker of the National Assembly for a period of five years.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila becomes the first woman elected to lead Namibia’s parliament.

She received 55 votes during an election after the swearing-in of new members of the National Assembly on Thursday.

She was competing with Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi, who received 40 votes.

“I am grateful for being elected despite our political parties affiliation. We must prioritise the national interests beyond ours,” Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said.

She urged parliamentarians to apply their minds in the spirit of democracy and propel Namibia to become a better country.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has been a member of the National Assembly since 1995 and was minister of finance from 2003 to 2015.

She served as prime minister from 21 March 2015 to 20 March 2025, and was the first woman to serve as prime minister.

Although her election as speaker may be seen as a demotion, she makes history again by becoming the first woman to lead the National Assembly.

THE ECONOMIST

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s first involvement in government was as an economist in the Office of the Presidency under the second Nujoma administration. She then ascended to head the National Planning Commission, becoming its director general until she was appointed to head the country’s treasury.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila rose through government and party ranks through the years until she decided to stand for the position of vice president at the 2022 ordinary congress of Swapo. That congress was to decide who was to stand as Swapo’s presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

She lost the race for the ruling party leadership to incoming president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila had to learn how to survive in the male-dominated world of politics as she rose in the corridors of power.

Her colleagues accused her of failing to rein in some Cabinet members when they transgressed, especially during the deliberative sessions she chaired.

She sometimes seemed reluctant to stand her ground on key national issues when put under pressure by her bosses and political colleagues.

Former minister of justice Sacky Shanghala and National Planning Commission director general Obeth Kandjoze, who was the then minister of mines and energy, are said to have undermined her authority as prime minister.

OTAMANZI

Born in 1967 at Otamanzi near Okahao in the Omusati region as the youngest of five children, both of Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s parents had died by the time she was 12 years old.

Her father, Fillemon Kuugongelwa, a contract labourer at Oranjemund, died when she was nine.
Shortly thereafter she lost her mother, Alina Shikongo, who was a school principal.

The struggle adopted her. In 1980 she made the journey across the border to Angola.

An ex-combatant at a Swapo refugee camp at Lubango in Angola remembered her as “a quiet girl who wore a red dress and always had her Bible with her”.

The movement saw something in her. They sent her to Sierra Leone for high school, where she discovered an interest in economics that set the stage for her university studies and eventually her political career.

After independence, she scored a scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where a fellow Namibian student in the United States remembers “she was always reading and studying”.

After graduation, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila got a job as a desk officer in founding president Sam Nujoma’s office.

Her rise was rapid and pushed by Nujoma. In 1995, when she was 27 years old, he appointed her to the National Assembly and gave her a Cabinet position as head of the National Planning Commission.

In 2003, Nujoma appointed Kuugongelwa-Amadhila as minister of finance – a job she kept until 2015.

Then, at 48, president Hage Geingob appointed her as prime minister – making her the youngest person to hold the job.

FINANCE

When Kuugongelwa-Amadhila became finance minister, she was a political novice with no support base.

Yet, in the 2006/07 financial year, she turned the government’s budget deficit into a surplus, gaining credit for having rescued the government from a financial bind.

But that discipline withered under president Hifikepunye Pohamba. Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s alleged inability to face political adversity meant she would sometimes sign off on grandiose capital projects, even when she knew the government could not afford it.

Pohamba’s pressure is now believed to have played a significant role in the country currently owing N$110 billion.

Three years into Pohamba’s presidency, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila still ran a tight fiscal ship, with government debt standing at N$13 billion. By the time Pohamba left office in 2015, the government’s debt had risen to N$56 billion.

Pohamba’s administration embarked on wasteful projects, such as the Targeted Intervention Programme for Employment and Economic Growth (Tipeeg) and a mass housing initiative.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has faced several accusations during her time in office.

As finance minister, she was accused of forcing the Development Bank of Namibia into debt of N$4 billion due to a project that was not urgent and to a state entity that had no obligation to pay back the money.

That debt resulted in the oil storage facility of which the cost has increased to N$6.5 billion amid concerns of negligence on the part of government officials such as Kuugongelwa-Amadhila. She has, however, denied any wrongdoing.

Other controversies involve her husband, businessman Onesmus Tobias Amadhila.