Organisations in Namibia are vulnerable to various internal risks, ranging from non-compliance with laws and regulations and breaches in cybersecurity to non-adherence to day to day business procedures, among others.
Furthermore, entities are also vulnerable to external risks. The current major external risks affecting most organisations in Namibia are the trending economic recession coupled with the recent global pandemic, COVID-19. The African Economic Outlook 2020 highlighted that the Namibian real GDP peaked at 6.1% in 2015 but declined by an estimated 0.5 % in 2018 and a further 1.0% in 2019. This was partly caused by government fiscal consolidation to correct growing imbalances from high public spending and falling revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) .
External risks known as “black swan” risks, with low likelihood of occurring but catastrophic impact on organisations when they materialise, such as the current COVID-19 crisis, are testing how agile Namibian organisations really are. This has necessitated an evaluation of organisations’ risk governance and culture in dealing with an evolving and fluid risk landscape.
This article aims to give an insight on the governance and culture of risk management in organisations in Namibia by leveraging the 2019 Deloitte Corporate Governance survey (“survey”) results.