By Michael Uugwanga

AT the end of the 2024/2025 Debmarine Premiership awards ceremony in June this year, Debmarine Namibia publicly went on record to expressed its disappointment towards the Namibia Football Association (NFA)’s top leadership, for failing to attend  the award ceremonies, which left many speculating that the diamond company will not be renewing its sponsorship with the NFA.

This is after Debmarine Namibia’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Willy Martins lashed out at the NFA’s leadership for a lack of respect towards football, in particular clubs, players and referees welfares, which caused the NFA to respond back in  a media statement lashing back to the sponsor, stating that Martins comment are damaging the brand of football.

Ever since the respond made by the NFA’s interim Secretary-general Cassius Moeti, the association has since struggled to get a sponsor for top tier football, before Government decided to rescue football with an amount of N$10 million for the current ongoing 2025/2026 season.

Over the years, Debmarine Namibia has supported sports development in Namibia for over a decade, and during that period, the diamond company through its funding gap, managed to launch the Debmarine Namibia Cup in 2017 and 2018 with a N$9.5 million investment. 

In 2023, it also committed a historic N$50 million to the Debmarine Namibia Premiership, the largest single football sponsorship in the country’s history.

In an interview with Confidente, Stella Ipinge, Communication Manager at Debmarine Namibia has given the real reason behind the diamond company’s reasons for not renewing its sponsorship towards football, citing the current economic hardship within the diamond industry.

“Our role has always been to enable growth and development in line with the NFA’s mandate, and we are proud of natural marine diamonds’ significant and meaningful contribution to youth empowerment and national unity through sport. As a natural diamond exploration company, unfortunately the natural diamond industry and indeed Debmarine Namibia is navigating increasingly challenging global market conditions and geopolitical uncertainties. In response, we have implemented strategic measures to safeguard our business and workforce. 

“As part of this broader business response, you will understand, the difficult decision we have made at this juncture to conclude our football sponsorship. We remain deeply supportive of football’s role in fostering community livelihoods, social cohesion, and youth development. While our current Corporate Social Investment (CSI) efforts are focused on fulfilling previously committed programmes, our belief in football’s power to foster community livelihoods, social cohesion, and youth development remains unwavering. We applaud the recently announced Government’s support for the sport and the call to corporate Namibia and all citizens to rally together and dig deep to continue driving football forward,” said Ipinge.