In Namibia, we speak casually of “unclaimed monies” in pension and insurance funds, as if this were a technical curiosity rather than a human crisis. Behind those words are widows, children and parents who have never been told that a loved one’s savings still exist in their name.
The term itself is a colonial legal leftover from South West Africa days, but the silence around it is entirely ours. We have normalised a situation in which millions sit idle while families struggle to buy food or pay school fees.
Other countries are treating this differently. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently launched the “Your Money, Your Right” campaign, urging citizens to reclaim unclaimed deposits, insurance and investments. He wrote: “Here is a chance to convert a forgotten financial asset into a new opportunity. Take part in the ‘Your Money, Your Right’ movement!” In the United Kingdom, a Dormant Assets Scheme has already channelled hundreds of millions of pounds from long‑forgotten accounts into social and environmental programmes, while still guaranteeing that rightful owners can claim their money at any time.
When I recently tried to book a meeting with a large IT company to discuss beneficiary tracing, they declined because the topic “sounded suspicious”. That reaction says a lot about how we have allowed this issue to be framed.
Namibia needs a transparent, rights‑based national campaign: to trace beneficiaries, to reunite families with what is theirs, and to ensure that any truly unclaimed monies serve the public good, not perpetual bureaucracy.
