When Khomas Governor Sam Nujoma walked into the Bloomberg Finance Lab on 18 June, he expected a routine visit to inspect a new facility. What he did not expect was to sit for the same certification now being offered to Namibian schoolchildren — and leave having learned something new about how global markets actually work.
The Governor’s candid admission came during last Tuesday’s official launch of the Bloomberg Finance Lab Schools Initiative at the High-Tech Transfer Plaza Select in Windhoek, where he revealed he had personally completed the Bloomberg Finance Fundamentals certification alongside the learners the programme is designed for.
“I expected it to be a formality. It was not,” Nujoma told an audience that included Deputy Minister of Education, Innovation, Youth and Skills Development Hon Dino Ballotti, NUST Vice-Chancellor Professor Niikondo, and MTC Namibia Chief Executive Officer Tim Ekandjo. “It was practical, and it was informative, in a way that changed how I understood both the global and the local economy in practice, not just in theory.”
The Governor’s testimony carries particular weight, coming from a leader who has been selected as one of 46 governors and mayors from 15 countries for the 10th class of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative — a nine-month programme designed to strengthen how institutions deliver services to residents.
His endorsement underscores a crucial point: if a sitting Governor can benefit from the training, the value for learners encountering it years before choosing a career is immeasurable.
A Region That Acted First
The Khomas Region endorsed the initiative on 9 June, long before a national conversation had even begun. The decision, Nujoma explained, came from recognising that while Khomas carries the weight of being home to the capital, its learners do not automatically gain exposure to the tools the economy demands.
“Too many of our young people finish school able to recite theory, but without ever having touched the tools that the financial world runs on,” he said. “This initiative closes that gap, and it closes it here, in our schools, for our learners first.”
That early backing has now materialised into a working lab, with twelve Bloomberg terminals valued at approximately N1.6 million contribution from MTC Namibia.
The Technology Gap Bridged
Ekandjo, whose company made the investment possible, framed the initiative as fundamentally about belief rather than equipment.
“A learner who sits at one of these terminals in Grade 8 is being told, quite directly, that world-class financial infrastructure belongs here, in a Namibian classroom, not only in a lecture theatre overseas,” Ekandjo said. “That shift in belief is, in our view, as important as the technology itself.”
The MTC CEO revealed that the company has extended its commitment beyond the classroom, ensuring that beneficiaries of MTC’s current internship programme will now be exposed to the Bloomberg Finance Fundamentals certification as part of their internship experience.
“We want the learners trained here today to see MTC, and companies like it, as a natural next step in that same journey,” he added.
The lab’s location at HTTPS carries symbolic weight for MTC, reflecting what Ekandjo described as a broader commitment to being present wherever Namibia is building its technology and innovation capability.
From Old Mutual to the Classroom
For Deputy Minister Ballotti, the initiative carries personal resonance. Before entering public life, he spent years in the Old Mutual Group, including as a business development executive, where the Bloomberg terminal was “not an abstraction — it was the tool on the desk.”
“It is how markets are read, how prices are understood, how decisions get made in real time,” Ballotti said. “If you have worked in finance anywhere in the world, you know this technology.”
The Deputy Minister noted that Bloomberg terminals are used inside the world’s leading universities — Harvard, Oxford, MIT and others — to train the analysts, portfolio managers and policymakers who go on to run markets and institutions.
“Until now, that kind of exposure was something Namibian learners only read about, or encountered for the first time at postgraduate level abroad, if at all,” he said. “A learner in Grade 8 in Windhoek can now sit at the same kind of terminal I once used at Old Mutual, years before they ever have to choose a career. That is not a small thing. That is a head start our generation did not have.”
A National Vision
The Deputy Minister framed the initiative as directly speaking to his ministry’s mandate, describing financial literacy, career awareness and exposure to real markets as essential components of a modern education.
Governor Nujoma challenged other regions to follow Khomas’s lead, declaring that the endorsement of one region “should not be the ceiling of this initiative’s ambition. It should be the floor others build on.”
The initiative extends beyond the facility itself. Prof Efigenia Semente, Executive Dean of NUST’s Faculty of Commerce, Human Sciences and Education, announced that later this year, NUST and NIFA will jointly organise a Bloomberg portfolio management competition, giving learners the chance to put their training into practice.
“This launch is a beginning, not a single moment, and that competition is the next one,” Semente said.
Schools from across Khomas Region and beyond sent principals, teachers and learners to witness the launch: A. Shipena High School, Centaurus High School, Deutsche Höhere Privatschule, Hochland High School, St George’s School, St Paul’s College, Windhoek Afrikaans Private School, Windhoek Gymnasium, Windhoek International School and Windhoek Technical High School.
“This Lab is not the destination,” Semente told the learners. “It is a tool, and it is now in your hands, to build your financial and investment literacy at an age when that head start matters most.”
The Bloomberg Finance Lab Schools Initiative represents a rare convergence of private sector investment, academic vision and political will, placing Namibia alongside leading global institutions in its approach to financial education. For the schoolchildren who now have access to the same terminals used in Harvard’s lecture halls, the message could not be clearer: the tools of global finance belong in Namibia, and they belong now.