AbstractsLaw & Legal Studies

Corporate Governance in Namibia is such a serious challenge, especially in the public sector. The public sector consists of government entities including state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Namibian SOEs are prevalent in the important infrastructural sectors of energy, water, transport, telecommunication, finance, etc., and their performance is of great importance to the entire population, local businesses as well as to foreign investors. The fundamental aim of this study was to evaluate the level of corporate governance in the Namibian SOEs using the adopted Evaluation Matrix that was developed by the Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa of the University of Stellenbosch Business School. This matrix was developed based on King II and King III principles of good corporate governance. Namibian SOEs are governed by the State-owned Enterprises Governance Council (SOEGC), which prescribes the King Code of Governance of South Africa (King Code) as the guidance of governance to Namibian SOEs. The research study employed the data collection method of using secondary data from the companies’ public documents, in this case the annual reports. According to King III, the annual report or integrated report as it is now ideally called is supposed to contain all the company’s governance issues that promote sustainability, accountability and disclosure within the company. Companies that did not disclose information scored poorly in disclosure and transparency. From this research, it has been observed that Namibian SOEs need to improve on disclosure. There are, however, a few companies, such as Namibia Ports Authority (Namport) that are doing relatively well and are close to having an annual report which is almost an integrated report. The study’s focus was also on boards’ sustainability aspects of good corporate governance. These aspects are: racial and gender diversity of boards, attendance at board meetings, and the presence of relevant board committees. On this subject, it was observed that Namibia’s SOEs are relatively on par with both South Africa’s SOEs and private sector, when compared to results of similar research studies in that country. The success of this research also proved that this Evaluation Matrix as developed can be adopted for use on corporate governance in Namibian companies.